'Splice' Review *SPOILERS*

It's been quite awhile since I've written a review and/or bitched about a movie, so here it is. I'm going full-throttle on 'Splice'.

I watched this movie last night after having it for several weeks, I kind of wish I had just sent it back without watching it. At first I thought most of it was good, just the end really got the bad looks. But as I thought of it more and more I began to realize that I thought it kind of, how do I say, sucks.

*SPOILERS*
Let me spell out the basics of the movie first.
Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley play two scientists (hip and young, of course) who have created these two creatures they name Fred and Ginger. Fred and Ginger were created to find cures for, I think, every disease blah, blah, blah. Of course they "imprint" each other and so make the magic cure, or something. They are all excited to continue on to make some kind of wonderful human-hybrid, but the drug corporation they work for wants to start stage two and move on to synthesize the proteins the creatures make for profit. So these two idiots decide to secretly create their own hybrid creature just to see if they can.

Of course, this being the plot of the movie, they see that they can indeed not only create the lifeform, but also bring it to term. They tuck it into, what I suppose is a secret room, yet it's right next to where the rest of the scientists are working, so it couldn't be that secret. After being born and then growing rapidly, Polley's character Elsa, convinces Brody's character Clive, to let the creatures life go on naturally since it's aging so quickly it'll die soon anyway; so he agrees. But soon things get a little out of hand and they have to move her to Elsa's mother's farm. Oh yeah...Elsa never wanted a real child because her mother was abusive to her and she didn't want to do the same to a child, or something along those lines. So, after all this neglect over their other, paying, project the original creatures attack each other at the shareholder's meeting, killing each other; the female one turned male.

Blah, blah, blah...the company gets real strict with the scientists and Dren (the creature's name. NERD spelled backwards, NERD being the company they work for) undergoes a series of events which show how Elsa does indeed have the same qualities as her mother, which culminates when she first takes a cat away from Dren, only to give it back and have Dren kill it before attacking her after Elsa slaps Dren. Fearing she'll attempt another attack, Elsa knocks Dren out and removes her stinger. Dren also develops wings at some point. This all sort of makes sense in the long-run, though stupidly.

Elsa uses the stinger tissue to generate samples to synthesize the proteins and saves the company. YAY! I'm not entirely sure, but just before the story goes off rail Elsa and Clive head back to the farm to get Dren and I'm thinking they were going to present her to the company or something so she can actually get out of the barn, or they were going to kill her; not sure. Anyway, when they get back to the barn she appears to be dead/dying in the water tank (yeah, she can breathe under water) and shortly she dies. This is where the movie should have ended...with Elsa and Clive burying her and that's it. But, you see...it isn't where the movie ends. I think the third screenwriter, the 'AND' screenwriter, had their hand in what comes next. What comes next is clearly included to make many, many sequels a-la Species. Clive and Elsa bury Dren and as they are walking back up front, a car drives up. It's Clive's brother and the company annoying-man. He demands to know where the creature is and as he demands something sweeps in and steals him away. Then it steals away Clive's brother and eventually Clive. But there is more! It then proceeds to rape Elsa (yeah, much like the other creatures, the female has turned male) thereby setting up the land of sequels before getting stabbed by Clive. Oh, there's more! Clive gets stabbed by Dren's stinger before Elsa smashes its head in with a rock.

So we end the story with her in the drug company's office getting a money offer and sympathetic, "No one would blame you for not going through with it", speech before she stands up and we see her pregnant and uttering the line, "What's the worst that could happen." I think she said that, it was uttered like 80 gazillion times in the movie. And that is what just made this movie tank in my eyes.

Before that, I actually was at least enjoying it. I thought Sarah Polley did a good job showing Elsa's issues with wanting a child but being afraid and then essentially treating Dren, her pseudo-child, exactly like she was afraid she would. I thought Dren was well-acted by Delphine Chaneac, she captured the child-like wonder and sadness that an abused and forgotten human child would show; the anger and frustration of not being able to leave the home. I thought Adrien Brody played idiot guy well enough. His hesitation at going along with Elsa time and again, his hesitation at Dren's advances...all of it worked. But what stopped it from working was when they took a story that should have ended, a commentary on science and morality in the common era, and took it down the road of stupid, shlock horror movie in order to set it up for sequels. That is when I checked out.