okay, I'm back from the movie. Quick thoughts: I'm not sure what others would think, but my advice to anyone reading this is DO NOT SEE SPLICE.
I mean it.
The movie goes to a fucked up place and does not return. I wish I could unsee it. There is a pivotal point in the movie - perhaps about 3/4ths of the way in, where the whole audience gasped and groaned in disgust, then laughed in disgust, and then groaned some more. What I didn't understand then (and I know all too well now) is that wasn't the lowest point in the movie. It actually got WORSE from there. And guess what, this is AFTER the event with the white font above - which was a terrible scene, but in the context of the movie, not that bad. Which is saying something.
Beau would give the movie zero stars (out of 5). He feels that it was an incompetent film - that the movie made its start look incapable of good acting. He's a literature phd, so he feels the movie did not have a story. He compares this movie to "The Cell" (which also didn't have a story), but The Cell is a better movie.
I agree with him. In fact, I would say that "Species" is a better movie. The main characters are portrayed as being very stupid - these are biochemists - mind you. They do the most stupid shit imaginable. I am pretty surprised at the positive ratings on RT. The movie doesn't deserve it at all.
When I read what le nubian wrote I ran over to Roger Ebert dot com but he gave it three stars! humph.
I think
The Cell
had a story. Not a fantastically complicated one, but the basic plot the rest hangs on is JLo trying to get through to the kid. And because of the serial killer, she can, but also learns something about herself (protagonist growth, blah blah).
Splice
just *looks* too freaky to me.
yeah, I don't understand why the critics like the movie so much. i really don't.
Ok, found a spoiler for the movie ending.
...Still better than
The Human Centipede.
Thanks to billytea, I had to go find a spoiler for the ending, and -- that's so fucked up it made me laugh and laugh, although I imagine if I saw it, I'd be aghast.
More fucked up than
Orphan
even?
Point me to the spoiler ending!
One reviewer admires the over-the-topness:
******
The trickiest thing in Splice isn't the creature design and FX but rather the tone. Someone described it to me as in the vein of Re-Animator, and I would agree to an extent. Splice is less obviously jokey than Re-Animator, but it does go large, and it goes large with gusto. I don't know that any of the choices the characters make actually make real world sense, but they all lead to wonderful things, and to an ending that keeps going places I didn't think it would. Natali and his team of co-writers certainly didn't feel the need to every play it safe.
Brody and Polley get the tone, and they go for it. Brody especially embraces it, which is the only way for him to get through some of the third act business when the movie gets extremely weird. Natali isn't just exploring gene splicing through the lens of scifi-horror, he's examining it through the lens of procreation. Natali is interested in how we deal with our offspring, whether naturally born or lab-grown, and how our own upbringing impacts that. A genetically engineered life form won't be the next leap, he's saying, it'll be just the next turn in a cycle of abuse that has gone on for generations.
There are a lot of problems with Splice; for a movie that had been in development for so long the script felt slightly half-baked, and the odd tone of the film means you either go with it right from the start when Adrien Brody looks like he just stepped off stage at a Hong Kong Cavaliers show or you'll be totally lost. If you can get in, the film is exceptionally rewarding with strangeness and cool creatures and a lingering aura of simple madness. Splice is exactly the kind of movie I keep waiting to see: strange, over the top, cool, thoughtful, monster-filled and just plain crazy.
