Splice

We watched one of the most daring. but disturbing movies of the 5 week film fest.
Splice is a movie that looks at what we are 'actually capable of' for example gentetically fusing two kinds of genes together, to create a hybrid.

Throughout the movie one of the main subtexts appears to be 'abuse'.
The evidence of this is when Elsa gets doesn't accept Dren's slight rebelism and for that moment, allows her anger to get the better of her. In which she straps Dren to a table strips her of her clothes, begins to name her as a creature rather than a human. And proceeds to cut her tail off without any remorse.

Dren to Elsa is only a human when she's obeying her.

I noticed from the very begginig of the movie one of thier first creations where dying and they kept brinigng it back to life. There is an underlying religous baring which springs to mind everytime they "try to play god".
When Elsa and Oliver where first making Dren there where many complications in his/hers creation. Several times the splicing didn't work "possibly due to a higher power" but they persisted and completely disobeyed the main rule of not "playing god."


Throughout the entire movie the scientist are pursused people within the government who wanted them to create creatures who can produce a certain kind of insulin...or rather some kind of perscriptional drug which can be farmed from thier hyrbrids.

When Dren is inside a syntheic womb, it once again has problems and temporarly stops breathing. Another chance of it dying. Dren's heartbeat, once re awakened,  begins beating at an incredibly fast speed, resulting in it growing at a faster rate than they expected. They seem to try and include alot of likeness to an actual birth in the movie. Elsa decides to stick her hand inside the synthetic womb, and ends up getting caught by baby dren, Oliver, in turn, had to perform a "Caesarean " .

Once they saw a strange creature fall out of it, once trapped, they recoiled in horror. Frightened of thier own rat formed creation.
The referred to it as a "mistake". When I heard that I wondered what where they expecting to happen, after delving into the unknown.
Oliver says that what was produce is "not alright" and "I'm going to kill it". What could he of possibly wanted to emerge from there, an immediately recognizable human like creature .
This does go along the lines of 'Because I gave you Life I can take it away'.

One of the parts I mainly remember is when the Elsa and Oliver decide to fornicate just after putting teen Dren to bed, (which is nasty in itself). Oliver clearly sees Dren' shadow walking towards the curtain, watching them. Instead of stopping to feel embarrased and show some dignity, Oliver decided to just watch her (watching him) while he continued fornicating.This makes it seem like he liked having his creation, his daughter almost watching him will he was having sex, this may of been the foreshadowing to the events that happened later down the line.

When Oliver decided to have sex with his 'daughter' effectively he knew it was wrong yet decided to pretened as if he had no free will over the situation. This is where the underylying 'Incest' comes into play.
Despite his earlier attempts to kill dren when she was a child, now that he found a use for her/ could have sex with her, he became the passive one and always tried to find a way to make Dren's living conditions comfortable.

Where as in the begginng Elsa was 'Mother hen' and continually kept trying to stop him from killing her, and saying that she was special, and deserved to live. She could loook after her.
But once Dren was all grown up, Elsa instantly became the worn out mother who had no patience and almost became a "wicked mother" trying to take away her 'freedom' and her 'humaity'.
Which becomes apparent when she strips Dren's clothes off, refers to her as a subject, and procceds to cut her tail off.

Its only once Dren appears to be dying but happenes to just be changing gender's.

The movie brings forth the idea that the feminine side of any creature is the more humain side, i.e. When Dren is a she, she wears clothes, she is quite, keeps to herself, but is 'pretty', her body is petite.
However when she becomes a he, male Dren, dosen't wear clothes, the first time we see him is after he kills someone, typical male sterotype agressor, when given a chance he instantly tries to rape his 'mother',  and does so, when pit against oliver after being stabbed we see a profile shot between male Dren and Oliver, male Dren comes across as the alpha male due to his increbily height compared to oliver.

The movies takes alot of steps which even in such a 'anything goes' culutre we have at the moment is still seen as a dodgy/risky subject. it does it, and by the looks of it, it may be the only film that may need to reintroduce these uncomftably wrong, yet real, situations.