By Robert Scucci
| Published 8 seconds ago

Sometimes you catch a movie that pisses you off so much while you’re watching it because every character in it is so unbelievably stupid. 2009’s Splice is exceptionally frustrating because it follows two genetic engineers, meaning smart people, who repeatedly make the dumbest decisions of their lives through reckless, unsanctioned medical experiments they should know better than to keep performing in secrecy. Movies like Splice always make me feel conflicted because the entire point of the movie seems to be pissing off the viewer.

The entire point of Splice, I’m convinced, is for me to scream at my TV, saying, “please stop doing stupid things,” and “wow, you’re pretty dumb for a genius.” As of writing this very sentence, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. The film evoked a visceral reaction from me, so if that was writer-director Vincenzo Natali’s intention, job well done, sir.

Could We? Should We? … Shasta? 

Splice tells the story of two genetic engineers who also happen to be romantically entangled: Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley). They both work at a company called Nucleic Exchange Research and Development, or N.E.R.D. for short. Clive is, by all measures, the more sensible half of the couple, but he’s also your typical movie scientist who, when told his funding may get cut, is willing to keep pushing forward anyway. Elsa, on the other hand, is the worst version of this character archetype ever committed to film, which we’ll get into in a second.

Clive and Elsa, along with their team, successfully create two animal hybrids named Fred and Ginger. Their bosses, Joan Chorot (Simona Maicanescu) and William Barlow (David Hewlett), want them to extract protein enzymes from the creatures so they can synthesize life-saving medications and bring them to market. Clive and Elsa express their desire to create a human-animal hybrid, which is rightfully discouraged because it’s playing God in the worst kind of way and a profoundly idiotic thing to do.

While Clive is disappointed that he can’t pursue what he believes is his true calling, he ultimately understands that holding off on this kind of experimentation, at least while working with Fred and Ginger, is probably the right move. Elsa, on the other hand, just goes ahead and does it anyway, resulting in the birth of a weird flipper baby they eventually decide to name Dren, which is N.E.R.D. spelled backward.

Dren is an intelligent little flipper baby, and before long she becomes a bigger, much more dangerous flipper baby. Every step of the way, Clive expresses his desire to end the experiment, the same one Elsa assured him would never even make it this far. Instead, they nurse the rapidly aging thing into adolescence and adulthood while neglecting the scientific breakthrough they’re actually being paid to monitor, resulting in a public embarrassment when Ginger transforms into a male version of the species and has a violent outburst during a press conference.

Splice Is Not Nice, And That’s The Point

What truly bothers me about Splice is Elsa. She’s one of the most unlikeable protagonists I’ve crossed paths with in a very long time, and I recently watched Nomadland, so that’s saying a lot.

Here’s my beef with Elsa. It was her idea to have a weird flipper baby and give it a name in the first place. Clive wasn’t totally on board until she forced his hand, and suddenly they had a weird, living, conscious half-human thing on their hands. Clive, who champions the scientific method and isn’t afraid to break the rules, is actually 100 percent in the right when he urges Elsa, who has formed a maternal bond with the flipper baby, to stop doing what she’s doing. Whenever the experiment backfires, Elsa takes zero accountability, shifts the blame, and takes her frustration out on everybody around her, including Dren.

Don’t get this twisted because I think Clive is equally in the wrong here, but his wrongness comes from cowardice and, quite possibly, a sexual attraction to Dren when she reaches adulthood that blinds his judgment in the worst possible way. If he had some semblance of a spine, maybe one he synthesized in a lab, Project Flipper Baby never would have gotten this far and gone off the rails so spectacularly.

Since he’s a pushover of the highest order, the blood is on his hands too when Dren, now secretly housed in the family barn that Elsa conveniently still owns, starts showing her violent tendencies while evolving into an exponentially more horrifying creature as the film progresses.

To make matters worse, Elsa starts setting arbitrary rules whenever her pride gets challenged, making an already terrible situation even worse. It’s almost as if she’s allergic to good advice. Just as much as Clive needs to synthesize a spine, Elsa needs to synthesize a conscience and a voice of reason because everything in this movie is her fault, yet she lacks the self-awareness to take accountability for any of it.

I Have Mixed Feelings

I think my reaction to Splice was exactly what Vincenzo Natali had in mind because he goes all in when creating characters who behave like this. It’s painful watching two scientists, people who should operate within some realm of ethics, potentially throw their lives away while endangering scores of people should Dren escape and wreak havoc on the surrounding community.

All I could think while watching this movie was, “please stop doing what you’re doing,” and I have to give it points for getting under my skin as much as it did.

As of this writing, Splice is not available through regular streaming subscriptions, but can be rented or purchased on-demand through Apple TV+.