Splice was an interesting departure from the torture-porn and slasher snuff films that make up a disproportionate number of horror films available today.

First things first. It is nowhere near as action packed or as violent as the trailers would have one believe. With a few notable exceptions, Splice does not show much violence or jumpy camera shots until the final 20 minutes of the movie.

The story is pretty simple. Two young scientists who are searching for a protein to heal animal diseases decide for reasons both scientific and personal to splice human DNA into their latest batch.

The Frankenstein motif is impossible to dodge (the two taboo breaking scientists ,Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, are named Clive and Elsa while their creation, Dren is a dead ringer for Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein) but MUCH more than Frankenstein it's Freud that provides the true horror in this film. It's the implications of what it means to be a parent and how we separate ourselves from our parents and/or our children that provide the scares in this film, not the special effects. Betrayal by or becoming like one's parent can be the ultimate horror.

Attention is also paid to the immorality of patenting life and how mega corporations are not to be trusted. I would be very surprised if the director and/or writers of this film were not at least sympathetic to animal rights arguments. There's an echo of those arguments here. Pets or children didn't ask to be here and deserve protection, not exploitation.

So it was a good movie. It is an intelligent bio-horror movie with a few disgusting and disturbing scenes but relatively light on gore. This tends to make the violent scenes stand out more. It's getting a lot of comparisons to Cronenberg but that's more in the quietness of the movie and the pacing than in the special effects or direction, IMO.

If this does well at the box office perhaps we will see top-line stars like Brody or Polley do more horror films.

Like some of the Frankenstein movies, the true horror in Splice is not in the "monster" created but in the motives and moral blind spots of those who created her. And Freud would have a field day with this movie. If you don't agree with or like Freudian theories, this is not the movie for you.

"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives."
Winter is Coming

Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.