The best thing since Spliced bread?

Splice
Starring: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chaneac
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Rating: 4 (out of 5)

Summary: Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) are young, brilliant and ambitious. The new animal species they have engineered have made them rebel superstars of the scientific world. In secret, they introduce human DNA into the experiment. The result is something that is greater than the sum of its parts: a female animal-human hybrid that may be a step too far in evolution...

The director of Cube Vincenzo Natali brings another inventive horror to the screen which modernises the Frankenstein tale for the designer baby age and mixes a hotch potch of Freudian wet dreams, sticky horror gore and capitalist allegory with ease.

Frantically wheeling test tubes of labelled horror genres into the lab, injecting them into an empty celluloid baby and managing to make a beautiful Hollywood horror as opposed to an ugly aborted mess is no mean feat and director Natali manages to do so with aplomb. Touching on morally ambiguous hot topics and then mixing them with the downright disturbed notions of inter species sex and rape, Splice revels in riffing on Cronenberg works like The Fly and Videodrome.

In fact just like Cronenberg the premise is not afraid to comment on the subject matter with tongue firmly in its post modern cheek. The career driven couple played by Brody and Polley both want different things, one a family nest and the other a successful career - and they will go to extremes to finally get that. Just as Cronenberg played on the protagonists fears of combining the flesh with technology, Vincenzo Natali messes with the fear of combining work with family life in a modern society that is playing with the unnatural capabilities of capitalism - and we delight in watching it all unfold.

Swirling around in this delightful mess of a movie are the increasingly eclectic Oscar winner Adrien Brody and Oscar nominated writer Sarah Polley. Both give competent performances in the ensuing mayhem, finding a convincing balance between outrage, desire and intrigue. However, despite these star leads, the real standout is French cinema stalwart Delphine Chaneac as laboratory creation Dren. With a fantastic physical performance she embodies the allure and vulnerability of a being that shouldn't exist and does not belong in a human world wanting to exploit her unnatural abilities. Equally heartbreaking as she is frightening, it's a real breakthrough that deserves the acting plaudits.

Ultimately Splice starts to lose its way in the final reel and descends into a sub par Species rip off, but sci-fi horror films this fantastically mongrel are few and far between from the Hollywood studio system so you can forgive the film makers attempted compromise to wrap it up into a satisfying, lazy ending for mass audience consumption. Just like Dren, this film is a beautiful creation from one of the best science fiction directors working today and will hopefully recieve praise and success with a mainstream audience.

Released 23rd July Nationwide