Splice

As history and literature has shown us over the years, there is something very dangerous about playing God in order to bring about life in an unnatural way (I promise this is the only religious statement in this entire article). From Frankenstein's monster to Octo-Mom, we have seen the dangers that come to exist when we over extend ourselves beyond the natural limits of nature. Splice, plays out much the same way and brought certain ethical questions to my mind.

The movie centers around a couple of scientists, Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) who work together professionally but are also a couple in their personal lives. They are considered to be the front runners in the world of "genetic research" and have been featured on the cover of Wired magazine. They are working towards the goal of harvesting a protein that could possibly solve a wide variety of the worlds epidemics (cancer and Parkinson's, to name a couple) but believe that in order to do that they need to splice human DNA with that of the animals. The company they work for is hesitant. They believe that commercially, splicing human DNA with the blood of animals would bring about a variety of problems from the outside world. They know the outside world will see the experiments as unethical. Clive and Elsa consider quitting but decide not to because they don't want to lose their years of research. Instead Elsa, decides to splice human DNA with the already spliced DNA of animals.

Clive wants to destroy the creature right away.

Elsa wants to let the creature live a little longer, the couple allow it though they can't tell anyone else about the creature because they secretly moved along with the experiment. As the creature develops it grows to resemble a human female child, albeit with a stinger, amphibious lungs, and later wings. The child learns to communicate with Elsa through the use of Scrabble tiles. As the movie progresses, Elsa begins teaching the creature how to spell using Scrabble tiles. First, Elsa spells her name and introduces herself to the creature and asks the child to spell the name that she has just seen. Instead the child spells "NERD" and points at Elsa's shirt. Elsa is surprised but the intelligence of the child and tells Clive that it knows how to make associations.This is where the two name the child Dren, which is Nerd spelled backwards.Clive and Elsa consider themselves Dren's parents.

Not wanting to give away too many plot details, I am going to shy away from revealing more plot details.Instead, I would like to raise a few questions: 

1) Should Dren be considered as a child, even though she matures at an alarming rate and physically resembles more of an adult?

2) How much of Dren's personality is a result of nature? How much of Dren's personality is a result of nurture?

3) Could there have been any other result for Dren had Clive and Elsa not felt it necessary to hide her from the world?

4) Do we consider Dren completely human in spite of her DNA being mixed with animals?

There are a lot of questions that I would ask the filmmakers and writers in regards to this movie. But these are the questions that predominantly exist within my mind.

I must admit that throughout the movie, I found myself sympathizing and more concerned for Dren. I had a hard time picturing Dren (Delphine Chaneac) as a monster and even when the "horror" part of the movie began I found it hard not to justify the monster's actions. Many questions remain in my mind for this part of the movie as well.

Overall, I thought this was a really good movie. In spite of the movies level of predictability, to me the movie's plot is secondary. The main reason why I truly enjoyed this movie was because it really caused me to question, think, and feel. Which is something that I never expected from this movie...primarily, because of the way the movie was marketed.