Splice review

Splice (15, 104 mins)
Director: Vincenzo Natali

★ ★ ☆☆ ☆

Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley star in this icky horror as husband and wife scientists who create a genetic splice between a human and an animal, a half girl, half “something” hybrid with the legs of the faun from Pan’s Labyrinth. Their goal is to cure diseases down the line, but as it grows in size and intelligence at quite a rate, clearly things are going to go awry. Though it attempts to question the morality of such things, Splice is really nothing more than a B-movie creature feature given legitimacy by an Oscar-recognised cast. You can trace its lineage all the way back to Frankenstein, with significant nods to Alien and The Fly along the way, with plenty of ideas, most of them botched in execution. Unfocused, highly predictable and all over the place in the way it develops, it never really convinces as horror before turning truly laughable late on.