Splice (review)

There is virtually no review of Splice that does not at some point mention Frankenstein in order to guide viewer expectations of the film and to position it within the horror genre. Director Vincenzo Natali himself refers to his film as ‘a Frankenstein kind of story’ (‘Behind the Scenes’ DVD extra), and the film’s superficial interest in the horrible possibilities of human gene-splicing and the resulting creation make it a somewhat predictable creature feature. Taken within the confines of horror, to which it belongs as undoubtedly as Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818) does to the Gothic, Splice might – like Mary Shelley’s novel in her own time – not generate much critical acclaim (or academic attention). But let us consider Brian Aldiss’s argument that Shelley’s text remodelled the traditional Gothic, wrenching its ghosts and monsters away from supernatural origins by establishing a man-made scientific rationale behind the terror (7–39), thus making Frankenstein the first instance of sf. Aldiss argues that the ‘search for a definition of man and his status in the universe’ (8; emphasis original), is established in Frankenstein as ‘the first great myth of the Industrial age’ (23), and endures to this day in sf. Moreover, James Gunn argues that sf, as the ‘literature of change’, is especially suited to projecting changes in our evolution and the elusive human condition, calling sf ‘Darwinian’, the ‘literature of the human species’ (vii). A film that discusses the position of the human when confronted with the next ‘evolutionary step’, that of a genetically engineered posthuman being, might thus open up to a science fictional reading and provide us with a glimpse of our current ‘status in the universe’. Splice, then, might more accurately be understood as a twenty-first century rendering of that great myth, of the creation of life by humanity.

The film tells the story of Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley), two young and very successful scientists, and their attempt to engineer the first posthuman by splicing human, animal and plant genes. What to them begins as an intellectual dare (‘to see if we can do it’) in a test tube, soon becomes a full-blown illegal experiment resulting in a bioengineered creature named H50, which then develops in burst of mutation from larva via a rodentlike stage, to near-human child and later adolescent. With the development of H50, the scientists become parents, accepting responsibility for their creation and naming her Dren, teaching the posthuman child while at the same time slowly losing control of the experiment. In the end, the parent–child relationship becomes as conflicted as the scientist–experiment relationship has been from the start. Clive and Elsa transgress all ethical boundaries both in regards to science and to childrearing, which leads Dren to rebel and in a last metamorphosis change sex to become a violent male posthuman adult.

The story works best when it keeps the horror in check and foregrounds the sf, establishing the metaphorical conceit that all scientific creation, especially the genetic creation of life, resembles parenthood in the sense that it is demanding, frustrating and endlessly bound by respect and responsibility for your creation. But the image of science has changed, the film suggests, from the drab view of the anti-social, slightly odd scientist working in secrecy and solitude to a media-hyped image of technoscientific glory. Clive and Elsa are hipsters: cool, attractive, dreaming of a designer apartment, Wired Magazine title stories and MTV fame. Clean, well-lit laboratories have replaced the damp cellars and attics of many a Frankenstein. Science itself has become a fashionable creative process where tedious and precise lab work takes on the CSI-feel of an actioncut scene underscored with hip techno music. Teams of young assistants do the legwork and pharmaceutical companies sponsor high-end presentations of the results. The ‘mad scientists’ in Splice are no longer irresponsible because they lose touch with society, shunning friends and family like Victor Frankenstein did because he...