Splice. 2009. US/Canada. Directed by Vincenzo Natali. Written by Vincenzo Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor. With Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chanéac. In English. 35mm. 104 min.
It’s easy to see why executive producer Guillermo del Toro was drawn to this CRISPR-era twist on the mad scientist genre, about a pair of ethically challenged geneticists, Clive and Elsa (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley), whose experiments with human-animal hybrids go horribly awry. Director Vincenzo Natali, who began developing Splice after the success of his 1997 indie-horror breakout Cube, trumpets his thematic influences—the ill-fated leads are named after Bride of Frankenstein costars Colin Clive and Elsa Lanchester—though in this case the “monster,” a deceptively childlike, gender-fluid hybrid named Dren (Delphine Chanéac) represents decidedly modern, psychosexual anxieties around motherhood and marriage.