***/****
starring Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chanéac, David Hewlett
screenplay by Vincenzo Natali & Antoinette Terry Bryant and
Doug Taylor
directed by Vincenzo Natali
by Ian Pugh Vincenzo Natali's Splice
unavoidably lives in the shadow of countless sci-fi/horror properties
that came before it--stories that have already taught us, as Splice
teaches us, that tragedies occur when Man dabbles in God's domain. But
dismiss the film as cliché at your own peril. While it provides
numerous shocks to the system, the traumas themselves take a backseat
to the horror of their implications and, moreover, what those tragedies
say about the risks and ambitions of daily life. Indeed, while the
movie consciously seeks to fashion a cautionary tale out of the stock
phrase "What's the worst that could happen?," its ultimate goal is to
tell that tale as a domestic drama.


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