The Horror of Splice

Over summer break I became one of the few people who were actually duped out of my $10 by a pretty well done trailer to go see the movie Splice. I wanted to see this movie because I am a fan of horror movies and judging from the trailer alone, Splice appeared to be your average, normal scary movie. However, the movie was not scary at all and lacked many of the traits that make up most of today’s modern day horror films. There was no eerie music, no blood and guts and a serious lack of main characters fighting evil beings and dying horrible, gruesome deaths. Leaving the theatre I was thoroughly disappointed and would not recommend this movie to anyone. It was in no way what I was expecting and not what I would have considered to be a horror movie, before taking this class.
By describing the plot of Splice I think you’ll see why it is that this movie was not what I was expecting. Two scientists who happen to be dating each other, Elsa and Clive, are the heads of a team that are pioneering a controversial experiment in combining two separate species of animal DNA (“splicing”) to create a new organism with the hope that this new organism will have genetic compounds in them that can be used to create vaccines and cure illnesses. In order to speed up their research and get results faster, they secretly splice human DNA with animal DNA. In doing this, they create a new creature that Elsa quickly becomes very attached to and treats as a child, even going so far as to name her Dren. Clive wants to kill it because it is unnatural and therefore dangerous, as well as could get put them in jail as slicing human genes is illegal. As a compromise, they move the creature out to a farm owned by Elsa and try to nurture it and teach it things. It grows violent and ends up killing Clive and attacking Elsa. Eventually Elsa succeeds by defeating and killing Dren.
This movie was much more psychological and plot centered than I expected it to be and had very little scary in it. In watching it, I was never really frightened, as much as I was disgusted. By Carroll’s definition however, I believe that this movie, terrible as it was, belongs in the horror genre. Dren was a creature that science tells us should not exist. The creature was definitely grotesque and abnormal in our everyday world. In being so, Dren placed a feeling of dread within the viewer. Splice also follows along with Carroll’s complex discovery plot. Elsa and Clive create Dren and horrific things begin to happen around them. They discover Dren is the cause and this is confirmed when they witness her begin to kill people and animals. When they confront Dren she is eventually defeated.
Splice is also an example of what Carroll terms as fusion, or two separate entities infused into one entity. In this case, it is human and animal DNA that is infused to create an abnormal creature. According to Carroll, being horrified is caused by a feeling of emotional distress brought on by three things: the possibility that the creature could really exist, the monster is threatening, and the monster is impure. All three of these are the case with the central monster in splice. We live in an age of scientific advancement and one of the most horrifying things about this movie, in my opinion, was the fact that with all this experimenting and advancement something could go horribly wrong and a creature like this could be created. The potential for reality makes this much more terrifying and scary because there is a real potential for something like this, an experiment gone wrong, to happen in the future and threaten life as we know it.
So after viewing Splice I left the theatre very disappointed by the fact that this was not a scary movie in any way as I was expecting it would be. According to Carroll however, I have no right to complain and demand my money back as by his definition, this movie was belongs in the horror genre. As a warning, I still strongly do not recommend seeing or renting this movie. It’s not even worth $1 it would cost you to get it from Red Box.