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Splice

Fig. 1 Splice poster.

The film Splice directed by Vincenzo Natali is a French Canadian sci-fi horror about two genetic

engineers Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) who hope to achieve fame by successfully

splicing together the DNA of different animals to create new hybrid animals for medical use. They

then embark and are intrigued into what may happen if they also spliced human DNA within their

experiment. The experiment begins to grow at an alarming rate much faster than the average

human and begins slowly to grow up in the world much like a human being and acting like a human

being but just, just looking like a human. Clive and Elsa welcome this Splice into their world with

open arms, willing to look after her and take on the responsibilities of their actions, with that they

also name her Dren as the next step in human evolution.

An experiment to create an animal/human hybrid that could revolutionize modern day medicine – if 

it doesn’t destroy humanity first. (Jason Buchanan, Rovi) 

Fig. 2 Dren as a baby.

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Dren the specimen/experiment goes through many rapid stages of growing, through to learning and

even freaking the humans out at some points due to how intelligent she actually is. Clive and Elsa

were original experimenting on already two made spliced experiments with great success the two

spliced experiments got on fine and even fell in love. Clive and Elsa then go onto showing the world

these two experiments to show what success they have made with their experiments and how much

it may change future medicine’s, They then introduce the two experiments together again but soon

find out that something has gone terribly wrong and both specimens have turned into male’s.

Because before one was male and the other female, but in this instance the female turns into a male

 just like that which is when everything goes wrong and they start to brutally attack each other.

Which by this point leave’s the audience with’ well if that happened to that experiment it might

even happen to Dren their new spliced human hybrid experiment.

Dren’s ability to grow at a faster rate than human’s, she begins to develop what seems to being

human thoughts and feelings for other showing the audience the definite human within her, At one

point through the film Clive knows that keeping this experiment is a really bad idea when his brother

finds out about the experiment. Dren becomes to get ill at some stage, were she seems to be

overheating and not being able to breath properly, both Clive and Elsa instantly think of placing her

into a water tank to cool her down because the amount of heat she it producing due to being ill.

They also discover she has what seems to be a slight swollenness within her that feels like it may be

a tumour. Clive and Elsa place her into the tank to cool her down and then this is when Clive gets the

idea of getting rid of the experiment once and for all and trying to drown her, Which they then

discover that she didn’t actually have a tumour what Dren had was actually gill’s much like a fish and

she breathed underwater which was why she was overheating was because she needed to get to

some water. As Dren gets older she becomes to get quite loud which, much like a screaming child

which at this point Clive and Elsa make a decision to move her to a barn with her own room andsomewhere to stay but refuse her from allowing her to see the outside world due to Clive and Elsa

not actually getting permission to do this experiment in the first place.

Elsa and Clive call this entity Dren, the reverse of “Nerd” (Peter Bradshaw) 

As the film comes on Dren becomes more different and intelligent, from breathing underwater,

becoming intelligent within the human life, gaining wings and even changing gender as we find out

later on at the end of the film. As the film goes on more inevitable things happen for example Dren

having sex with Clive due to him being so much in work and study he needs sex and realises that

Dren actually has Elsa’s DNA, therefore Clive sees Elsa’s DNA within Dren and actually get physical

attracted to her because of the way she acts, exactly the same as Elsa. Evenutally Dren changes even

more and becomes male and ends up even killing Clive and rapeing Elsa until all comes to the end

when Elsa kills Dren with a large rock.

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Fig. 3 Dren as an Adult.

“A Frankenstein with a beating, gene-spliced heart and top of the range performances” (Newman) 

Fig. 4 Dren as an Adult when she turns male.

Illustration

Fig. 1 (2009) Splice Poster http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1017460/ (accessed on 17/10/2011)

Fig. 2 (2009) Dren as a baby http://www.fusedfilm.com/2010/01/sundance-2010-twitter-report-

vincenzo-natalis-splice-gets-all-the-buzz-sundance-queen-kristen-stewart-in-welcome-to-the-rileys-

reitmanss-in-the-air-has-great-company-ryan-reynoldss-buried/ (accessed on 17/10/2011)

Fig. 3 (2009) Dren as an Adult Female http://uk.gamespot.com/unions/18091/forums/27389253 

(accessed on 17/10/2011)

Fig. 4 (2009) Dren as an Adult when she turns male

https://reader009.{domain}/reader009/html5/0509/5af23e58d5a9b/5af23e5ae72c5.png (accessed on 17/10/2011)

Bibliography

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(Jason Buchanan, Rovi) (2010) http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1208173-splice/ (accessed on

17/10/2011)

(Peter Bradshaw) (2010) http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jul/22/splice-review (accessed on

17/10/2011)

(Newman) (2010) http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/review.asp?FID=135263 (accessed on

17/10/2011)