The horror genre has become kind of sad to look at these days. Sure, it's primarily been just a fun way to scare people, but there's definitely some horror movies out there that are genuinely good movies; The Thing, The Exorcist, George A. Romero's early "Dead" films; these are just a few examples of many. Last year showed a slight step up in terms of horror. We got such movies as Trick 'r Treat, The House of the Devil, Drag Me To Hell and Paranormal Activity, which all were a very breath of fresh air in a genre that mainly now consists of remakes, sequels or tonal copies of more popular films.
In my opinion, the best kind of horror can be achieved in a few different ways.
1. Providing an atmosphere in your movie that puts the audience on edge and puts them in some state of fear, unease or even making them feel slightly creeped out. If you can present some images that makes the viewer nervous to walk around their house in the dark that night, you've done your job well.
2. Using certain horror tropes in order to tell an original, compelling story with realistic, believable characters.
3. Just having balls-out fun and adding a lot of crazy elements in order to let your audience just have a great time.
4. If nothing else, horror can work if you're showing your audience something very dark and fucked up.
Splice works heavily in that last one. It's not very scary, but in terms of showing you very bizarre, fucked up things, Splice works in spades.
The movie follows Clive and Elsa (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley), two genetic engineers who have become the equivalent of rock-stars in their field with their work involving splicing together the DNA of different animals in order to create new creatures. They want their next step to involve introducing human DNA into the mix, but when their funders forbid it, the two decide to take the next step in secret. Soon they're responsible for the creation of a creature that they end up naming Dren. Needless to say, things soon go very wrong.
The way the trailers are selling the movie, you would think that what follows is your standard monster movie, and while monster movies do play a definite influence on Splice, the majority of the film seems to take more from David Cronenberg. Instead of having Dren responsible for a bunch of death and destruction for the majority of the film, the movie goes a different route and instead has Dren become a catalyst for the slow destruction of Clive and Elsa's relationship. Elsa, whom we learn vague hints about an abusive childhood, forms a strong, maternal bond with Dren, while Clive, realizing that they crossed a line in creating Dren, wants nothing to do with her.
The movie kept me engaged for the majority of the film because the relationship between the characters worked so well. Sure, the two aren't deeply complex but I bought their relationship and that kept me interested until the films goes into it's more bizarre territory. The best performance by far goes to Delphine Chaneac as Dren. She has no real dialogue, mainly communicating in odd chirps, but Chaneac gives the character so much life and really drew me in and made me sympathize for her.
While the first half of the movie works well, the second half is what most people will focus on. That is where things take a very bizarre turn and also where the movie seems to lose a lot of people. Without spoiling much, instead of letting the dark elements focus on violence, director Vincenzo Natali takes a different turn and has the dark elements intertwine with sexuality. You can have buckets of gore and people will be all for it, but introduce sex and for some reason, they can't handle it. Moments that are meant to be shocking and disturbing are instead met with mocking laughter. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a lot of great dark humor in the film, but with my audience, it was clearly a case of an audience being presented with something weird and different and thinking that meant it was bad. Natali has defended these moments in the film by saying that good horror involves showing an audience things they haven't seen before. He definitely succeeded with this and the fact that it's being met with so much disdain is very disappointing.
Which leads me to my next point, involving what a pain in the ass movie audiences can be these days. The laughter was a mild problem. It's just a case of the movie not working people. What annoyed me was the majority of the theater acting like they were in their home. Sitting in front of me were a group of guys who were constantly looking at their cell phones, causing a bright light to glare out. Behind me was a girl commenting on every development with "What the fuck?" or "This is nasty". Near the back of the theater was a group of teenagers who, during the last half hour, just started making stupid wisecracks towards everything that happened. Call me old-fashioned but if I'm paying money to see a movie in the theater, I shouldn't have to put up with that shit. I don't know how the social mores have fallen to the point where it's okay to be completely rude and disrespectful to a theater full of people who paid money to (shocker) actually watch and enjoy a movie. I have no problem with an audience getting into and having fun with a comedy or horror movie, but when people start acting the same way in the theater as they would if they were watching the movie at home with their friends, there's something wrong. It makes me feel like an old man at only 24 to say I don't understand the younger generation, but that definitely seems to be the case.
All audience issues aside, it didn't change the fact that I really enjoyed Splice. It's not a new classic or anything but gives us something that's rare with movies today in giving us an original story that isn't afraid to take risks and shows us things we haven't seen before. The dismal box office performance seems to suggest that's not what audiences are looking for, which kind of sucks, but just being able to find a movie that's as odd and creative as Splice is a definite plus.
