1: A French Canadian Horror Film.

Vincenzo Natali made Cube and he proved that he was more than just one film. Actually, he keeps on doing that. But man, Splice has creatures and moments that upset me and I thought I’d seen it all.

Genetic engineers Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody, as creepy as he was when he tried to be rasta) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) are creating hybrid creatures by splicing animal and human DNA. Employed by N.E.R.D. (Nucleic Exchange Research and Development), their assignment is to create new proteins for the next wave of prescription drugs. What they create are Fred and Ginger, two Cronenbergian creatures that are going to mate and then create a wonderful new form of life.

One problem. N.E.R.D. owners Joan Chorot (Simona Maicanescu) and William Barlow(David Hewlett) want them to start dissecting Fred and Ginger and get on with making drugs.

Elsa wants a child and through Dren, the creature that they create — she even gets her DNA into it — is that baby. Or something. It refuses to die, constantly evolving to become something new each time it seems that its life is in danger. Yet it’s more animal than human, unwilling to learn that a cat is something you keep and not kill with your stinger tail. Of course, once Clive cuts it off her in a horrifying scene, the humans are even worse than a creature that only has the instincts that it was given, much less the sociopathic tendencies of Elsa’s family tree.

This movie also has one of the most upsettingly awesome sex scenes I’ve ever seen, one that somehow gets interspecies mating and incest into one frothy mix of torment.

I’m glad that Natali, who also wrote this with Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor, was able to keep this movie from getting sequel after sequel. And I had no idea Dren was played by an actual human, Abigail Chu as a child and Delphine Chanéac as an adult, because there’s an uncanny valley about the way she appears. She really does look unlike any other life form. Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero designed eleven different versions of her and there is some digital art there, as her eyes — those are really the eyes of the actress — have been spaced further apart.