Splice

With that tail, she'd better not be.

Splice is a 2009 sci-fi/Body Horror film directed by Vincenzo Natali and starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley.

The movie is about two young scientists and lovers, Clive and Elsa, who are world-renowned for both their research into gene splicing and their brash, iconoclastic attitude, and have made the cover of Wired magazine for their efforts. After creating two artificial organisms, named Fred and Ginger, for use in obtaining enzymes for medical research, they decide that the next step is to put human DNA into the mix.

Acting in secret to avoid getting busted by their bosses at the pharmaceutical company, Clive and Elsa create Dren, a hybrid creature made from human and animal DNA that exhibits remarkable intelligence and physical attributes, as well as accelerated aging. Initially treating their creation as a cute pet, they soon have to move her to Elsa's old farmhouse once it grows too big for its britches. In addition, they have to worry about Gavin, Clive's brother and co-worker at the lab, once he figures out about Dren and threatens to spill the beans to their boss.

There's also the fact that Dren, once a cute child, is now entering the equivalent of her teenage years, with all of the hormonal swings that this implies...

Not to be confused with the similarly-named 2002 horror film or the similarly-named Canadian animated series.

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Tropes used in Splice include:

• Abusive Parents: Elsa and Clive are terrible parents.
  • Elsa much, much more so than Clive, as per Too Dumb to Live and Strapped to An Operating Table below.
• Arc Words: "What's the worst that could happen?"
• Bald Women: Dren... until she becomes a man.
• The Bechdel Test: Passes. The last scene of the film is Elsa and her female boss, discussing what has happened, and where they will go from there.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: Dren has one of these.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: The people in the front row at the press conference get showered with blood once Fred and Ginger, the two transgenic organisms created by Elsa and Clive, start fighting.
• Body Horror
• Caught with Your Pants Down: Elsa walks in on Clive and Dren having sex, and is appropriately squicked out and pissed off by it.
• Chekhov's Gun: Ginger's spontaneous sex change.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Though it was mainly a case of "we're just interested in money" at first (The corporates only held off human testing for PR reasons), morals go out the window when they find out Elsa is pregnant with Dren's child.
  • Legally, though, they were Dren's rightful owners.
• Cradle of Loneliness: Dren does this with a cat at one point while Elsa and Clive are away.
• Cute Monster Girl: Dren.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Dren's stinger coming out when she orgasms during sex with Clive.
  • It looked like she was going to kill Clive at that point. Probably a result of her life cycle: mate with a male, kill him, turn male yourself, impregnate a female.
  • It's worth mentioning that Fred and Ginger are also very phallic.
  • Possibly unintentional, but stripped of its sci-fi elements, Dren's story is a pretty close match to what Real Life pet chimpanzees often go through: pampered like human babies as infants, then locked up and treated more like animals as their strength increases, and eventually driven by frustration and cross-species sexual confusion to violent outbursts that get them put down.
• Dysfunctional Family: Would be darkly funny to watch if it wasn't so simultaneously sad and disgusting.
• Face Heel Turn: Dren turns into a bloodthirsty killer after her Gender Bender...which is quite jarring when comparing that to her naive, Adult Child female form.
  • Though you would be pretty pissed off too if you had to claw your way out a grave your parents dug for you. They did think she was dead but her mother had also just finished cutting off her stinger the night before.
  • Also happens to Fred and Ginger after the latter changes sex, although "face" is an odd description for creatures that don't really have one.
• Fetus Terrible
• Flight: Type 1.
• Foot Focus: Not on any normal feet, mind you.
• Foreshadowing: See Gender Bender. Also, Dren's drawings of Clive before they have sex lead to drawings on Elsa before, well, see Gender Bender.
• For Science!: Subverted. On the surface, Clive and Elsa seem to be at least as motivated by fame and fortune as by the pursuit of science. Elsa also has another motivation -- to have a child that she could have complete control over.
• Freudian Excuse: Elsa's secret reason for making Dren, as well as her later abusive, controlling nature, comes from her abusive mother.
  • It could be said that Dren has one of these as well.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Male Dren vs. the scientists.
• Fun with Acronyms: Nucleic Exchange Research and Development.
• Gender Bender: Ginger turns from female to male due to hormonal changes, and fights Fred (who was male from the start) during a press conference that unleashes a shower of blood on the crowd. Dren later does the same thing.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Dren, though it's more accurate to call her a Transhuman.
• Healing Factor: Dren seems to have one of these, as she is capable of regrowing her stinger and surviving getting speared through the chest with a tree branch. Bashing her/his brains in seems to do the trick, however.
• Hollywood Sex: Averted with Elsa and Clive having a rather undramatic quickie on the couch. Rather than adhering to The Modest Orgasm trope, Elsa (and Clive) climaxes with audible but restrained gasps and groans to avoid waking up Dren who is asleep in the adjoining room. It doesn't work. Realism somewhat reduced by what this troper thought looked like a female example of Right Through His Pants.
  • Played straight between Clive and Dren.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Dren starts displaying increasingly erratic and violent behavior as her adolescence kicks in.
• Hot Scientist: Elsa, and Clive depending on who you go for.
• Idiot Ball: "Oh sure, a creaky old farmhouse with rickety boards for walls and glass windows is the perfect security to contain a violent beast with superhuman speed, strength and agility!!"
  • A barn with (presumably) lots of sharp implements is a great place to leave a child unattended for most of the day. How could this possibly go wrong? Sadly this angle isn't played up, but oh well.
  • Then the ball is almost literally passed. Elsa gets her brain together after Dren kills the cat and threatens to kill her as well, but Clive switches into the "Omigod, she's so cute, you can't strap her to the table, I think I'll screw her" mode.
  • It boggles the mind why they didn't amputate Dren's stinger when she was a baby and they'd had her anesthetized for examination. Sure, it would've grown back, but they didn't know this, and it would've been a logical safety precaution when they still thought Dren had an animal's intellect.
  • They could have also perhaps used D.N.A. that didn't include the option for a stinger.
  • A cat is too dangerous, it might make her sick. It's not like taking her from a presumably sterile lab and eventually winding up in an abandoned barn could possibly be bad for her. Ah, hell, take the cat back, kid.
  • There's a strange new creature which has bitten me before--I think I'll take off my safety mask and glove!
• I'm a Man, I Can't Help It: Apparently Clive decides to screw Dren for reasons known only to himself. I guess since she had some of his girlfriends features and is mostly human he figured she was better than a cold shower and waiting an hour for his girl to come home. Or something...
  • Maybe pheromones?
  • Also, note how while Dren may have been a bit pushy with Clive, it was certainly consensual, but with Elsa, male Dren nearly IMMEDIATELY decided he was GOING to have sex with her, and didn't care if she wanted to.
• I Meant to Do That: See Shoot the Dog.
• Interspecies Romance: Dren falls in love with Clive, and eventually has sex with him.
• Ironic Echo: In...side...you...
• Kick the Dog: Many examples from the scientists can be seen as Shoot the Dog moment, but when Dren is given back her cat... well...
• Lego Genetics: Though at least they don't add further features later on.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Alongside Blood-Splattered Innocents, this was the result of Fred and Ginger's fight.
• Mad Scientist: Elsa and, to a lesser extent, Clive, although he is more reluctant about creating Dren.
• Meaningful Name: Fred & Ginger, Clive and Elsa.
  • Backwards Name: Dren is Nerd backwards. This hasn't stopped some Farscape fans from pointing out that it also means... something else...
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: Oh, boy. First there's the male Ginger and Fred killing each other at the press conference. And then, Elsa is the only one to come out alive from the events of the last ten minutes. Dren is also killed as a man.
• Mood Whiplash: Due to the Uncanny Valley, Dren can shift the tone of the scene at a moment's notice by switching between animal and human behavior. Either side can be utterly adorable or terrifying.
• Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: Like you wouldn't believe.
• My Beloved Smother: The relationship between Elsa and Dren eventually devolves into this. It doesn't help that Elsa used her DNA to make Dren.
  • Elsa had to deal with this with her own mother.
  • Clive and Elsa's boss is an older woman. At the end of the film, she clears up her kids' mess (i.e. organizes a cover up), and puts a consoling hand on Elsa's shoulder. One expects that she will be keeping a closer eye on the kids in future ...
• Never Trust a Trailer: Actually somewhat of a positive case: the trailers make it seem like it's going to be a conventional horror movie about a genetically engineered monster that escapes from the lab and starts killing people. Granted, this is what happens eventually, but not until the last ten minutes or so, and before that it's actually a rather nuanced movie about Clive and Elsa struggling with concerned about casually commenting on the ethics of what they've done.
• Next Sunday A.D..
• Not Quite Dead: Dren, who turns into her adult, male form in the process of coming Back from the Dead.
  • Not Quite Dead occurs multiple times throughout the film, generally foreshadowing a new change in Dren.
• Our Demons Are Different: While not a demon Dren is resembling the classical succubus and even going so far as to changing gender.
• Parental Incest: Dren with both of her/his parents.
• Plot-Relevant Age-Up: The animal genes within Dren cause her to mature to adulthood in just a few weeks.
  • But the cells showed to explain Dren's aging divide really, really quickly.
• Rags to Riches: Elsa grew up sleeping on a mattress on the floor, and is now a wealthy celebrity scientist.
• Rape as Drama: Dren raping Elsa during the climax of the movie.
• Rasputinian Death: by the end of the movie, Dren has been bludgeoned (twice), drowned, poisoned, and stabbed.
• Rule of Cool: From a purely Biological standpoint Dren's wings would not work very well in real life and don't serve any purpose in the film until the third act.
• Science Is Bad: While the scientists are the protagonists, this is the vibe one gets after the scientists' arrogance (among other things) leads them to create Dren, who does indeed murder her creator, or at least one of them. Further, the ethical questions that are brought up are not explored, just brought up and then ignored by the scientists.
  • Also a arguable aversion, given that nearly everything that goes bad is portrayed as being a matter of human failure.
• Screw Yourself
• Sdrawkcab Name: Dren is named after Clive and Elsa's company, Nucleic Exchange Research and Development (NERD).
• Sequel Hook: At the end of the film, Elsa is pregnant with Dren's baby, and the boss thanks Elsa for her readiness to carry on with "phase two" of the project
  • However the creator has stated that he doesn't think there will be one, preferring to leave the film with a 'question'.
• Shoot the Dog: Subverted when Clive 'drowns' Dren, only for this to cause her gills to activate.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Unintentional; the entire sound track is suspenseful, as would suit a horror film. The film doesn't become a horror movie until the third act.
• Spiritual Successor: To The Fly, another genetic Body Horror film centered around sex and the dysfunctional family.
• Strapped to An Operating Table: Elsa does this to Dren in order to cut off her stinger, which serves two purposes -- making her less dangerous and giving her a source of tissue for extracting enzymes.
  • She also does it to dehumanize Dren.
• Tempting Fate: "What's the worst that could happen", Elsa? Turns out you could end up creating an ungodly, chimeric hybrid that tries to kill you, steals your man, turns male, kills him, his brother and your boss, and last but not least, rapes you and leaves you pregnant.
  • And even after all that, Elsa's still at it.
• Too Dumb to Live: The main characters. Full stop. You really have to wonder if making all these weird Frankenstein-esque monsters is actually necessary to get the enzyme or if the enzyme is even really worth it in the first place.
• Transhuman Treachery
• Twenty Minutes Into the Future: It is implied with the technology available to the team at N.E.R.D, (such as artificial uteruses that can grow clones without surrogate mothers), far more advanced than anything we have now, and the common practice of hybridization that this film takes place sometime in the near future rather than present day proper.
  • It should be noted that several monitors clearly show the year as being 2009. They may just be ignoring the current state of science for the sake of plot.
• The Voiceless: Dren.
  • Except for two words. It also makes several screeching noises too.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: "Not it. Her."