Two genetic research scientists create unique life-forms by splicing together the DNA of various animals. Their work takes a shocking turn with the inclusion of human DNA. Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody star in Splice (2009).
Are you familiar with those old folksy morality tales? They usually go something like this: a couple of teenagers are parked, out on the old “lover’s lane”, when they hear a news report on the radio about a crazed axe murderer on the loose. They fail to heed the warning and are then murdered by the very same axe wielding maniac. The moral of the story is of course that they shouldn’t be having sex because … that’s when the axe murderers get you? Any way yeah, these stories were meant to dissuade young people from yielding to their raging hormonal urges.
Splice is like that, a morality tale. But instead of horny teenagers falling prey to axe murderers, the target audience here is reckless geneticists falling prey to an abomination created through their experiments or as your grandpa might have said, when they “meddling with nature”. So if you happen to be a geneticist or molecular biologist or something along those lines I guess this movie is your hint to A: stop making out in parked cars and B: stop sequencing genomes.
Two young rebellious scientists are told by their employers to halt groundbreaking work that has seen them produce new creatures with medical benefits by splicing together multiple organisms’ DNA. They decide to secretly continue their work, but this time splicing in human DNA.
Anonymous via IMDB
I’m terribly sorry but … This post about the movie Splice was part of the content that was lost due to a database error. All that could be recovered was the excerpt. It wasn’t the best or most important movie I had seen in 2009. I didn’t feel compelled to write a new article about the movie Splice to replace the content that was lost. However, I do enjoy Sarah Polley so I have elected to preserve the excerpt portion.
Splice is a movie about two genetic research scientists who create unique life-forms by splicing together the DNA of various animals. Their (eventual) goal is to have the “engineered animals” produce enzymes and proteins to be used in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals. That part of the plot isn’t even science fiction. Actual scientists have genetically engineered a goat to produce an extra protein in it’s milk, which can be extracted and spun into spider silk.
When lead scientists Elsa Cast (Sarah Polley) and Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) learn that the next phase of their project will be less interesting than pushing the frontiers of genetic engineering they decide to go beyond legal, moral, and scientific boundaries by introducing human DNA into their experiments. What could possible go wrong?
The result of their unauthorized experiment is a strange creature with extremely rapid growth an development. The two scientists are forced to sneak their creation out of the lab for fear of it being discovered and destroyed.
I’m sure you have already predicted that something goes wrong with this plan. If you want to know more, you’ll have to check out Splice. It’s not exactly what I would call a good movie, but it is worth a weekend rewind.
