Creating Monsters

It wasn't like anything I'd seen before. I don't know what that says about how much I truly know about films, but I was really in for the surprise of my life with Splice.

This Canadian science-fiction film, made in 2009 and released in selected cinemas here just a couple of weeks ago, tells the story of two young popular scientists, the boyfriend-girlfriend team of Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley), who have successfully spliced together the DNA of different animals and created a hybrid creature. They take their experiment another step further, secretly and illegally, by splicing human DNA with that of other animals. It is directed by Vincenzo Natali.

The young scientists, considered superstars in their field because of their achievement, venture like the first man and woman into their own version of the Garden of Eden, with the promises of their successful gene splicing experiment seeming almost heavenly. Curing cancer and other serious illnesses, replacing organ and entire body parts—these were suddenly within reach. But then the god of their laboratory, the pharmaceutical company that funds their research, N.E.R.D. (Nucleic Exchange Research & Development), tells them not to eat the forbidden fruit.

Do they listen? Like Eve to Clive's Adam, Elsa takes the first bite and proceeds with Stage 2 of their experiment by combining human DNA with animal DNA. Clive eventually succumbs, and soon, they're hiding an ugly-beautiful hybrid creature in Elsa's old farmhouse and losing their grip on the scientific aspect of their project.

Splice isn't about science as it is about humanity. Specifically, it is about the effect of their experiment and their experience of their creation on Elsa and Clive. Elsa is first to obsess on the creature, which they name Dren (“nerd” spelled backwards; portrayed by French actress Delphine Chaneac). She tames it from its “birth,” and finds it easy to shower it with affection, much to Clive's initial resistance. They fight about Dren, but Elsa always manages to talk him into taking the experiment—and their relationship with the humanoid—further.

Clive, on the other hand, finds it more and more difficult to keep his objective distance, especially when, like a frustrated mother, Elsa becomes too tough on the what he begins to see as their “child.” He becomes protective of Dren; he is the first to mention the word “love” when she starts exhibiting signs of loneliness and rebellion; and it is he who wins her over and stops her initial attempt at escape.

Despite the humanity in Dren's emotions, she is still, of course, not quite human. For most of her young adult life, she has legs that look like those of a calf, a long tail with a poisonous sting, amphibian lungs, a pointed tongue, and bird wings. She grows at a very fast rate, developing from a creature that looks like a cross between a chicken and a seal, with no arms and a split face, into a rather attractive young woman with fetching eyes and rosy cheeks.

Of course, her physical appearance is not even half of the story. There's her temperament, her intellect, her strong animal instincts. She displays a capacity to need and give love, but she also displays a capacity to destroy and kill, both out of self-defense and, unfortunately, revenge.

Looking at Dren's pretty and innocent face, it's not hard to understand how Elsa and Clive quickly become parental figures to Dren. However, it is this that suddenly makes Dren too big a project for the couple. They become reckless; they get too involved. Clive ends up doing something extremely disturbing; Elsa tries too late to shift into scientist mode and ends up experiencing something even more disturbing.

Did they have it coming? Maybe. Or maybe not.

They had initially set forth into their own version of the Garden of Eden to find the tree of knowledge. They bit off more than they could chew. In crossing boundaries that weren't meant to be crossed, they had ended up creating monsters. They created a monster in Dren. They created a monster in their selves.

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