In Splice, Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley play a married couple working as scientists. Brody and Polley, with their fey charms and killer cheek bones, convince you of their supposed profession in the same way that Jake Gyllenhaal and Gwyneth Paltrow made you believe maths geniuses could have perfect skin and have rippling bodies in Proof. Not a great start, then.
OK, so the casting is a little hokey but the film is surprisingly fresh. The pair foster a genetically engineered human-animal child which they name 'Dren'. In a final nod to complete unbelievability they smuggle it out of their commercially-funded lab (they and only one other person know it exists) and take it home in order to raise it.
This is when the real interest begins. Polley's Elsa sees it as a dry-run for the child she and her husband have never had the time or the interest to have. Brody's Clive (yes, you heard me, his character is called Clive), initially is jealous but his relationship with Dren gets more complex and disturbing over time. Freud would love this movie.
The film with its confused casting and push-me-pull-you subject matter (is it an alien movie? Is it a relationship movie? And, with the constant transformation of its central alien, it body horror?) is subsequently a bit of a mess. However, in its tangle are some eyebrow-raising surprises .
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