Ten Days of Terror!: Splice

Films: Splice
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I really don’t like Splice. I didn’t like it the first time I saw it, back when Nick Jobe and I did a podcast together and I didn’t like it this time when I watched it. While I think it gets the creature effects done pretty well, it gets everything else wrong. Splice only works as a story if we have a bunch of very, very smart people acting in very, very stupid ways and making the absolutely wrong decision every time a decision needs to be made. People make mistakes; I get that. But these people make literally every mistake they can, including a few that are so ridiculous they almost defy coherence.

Elsa (Sarah Polley) and Clive (Adrien Brody) are both a couple and a couple of genetic engineers who are attempting to create new life by, well, splicing DNA from a bunch of different species to make a new species. The hope is that all of the splicing and genetic synthesizing will create new critters that will be little biological factories for new medical marvels (think Alzheimer’s and diabetes cures). The movie starts with the “birth” of Fred, a male blob critter, to match up with their previous blob critter, Ginger. Fred and Ginger meet, imprint on each other, and everything seems to be good.

Off Script: Cube

Films: Cube
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on the new internet machine.

I remember watching Cube for the first time. It’s an odd film in a lot of respects. It doesn’t have a great deal of plot, or really any plot at all. It has a situation rather than a story, and a gang of characters that try to survive through the story that we’re given. It is almost purely allegorical in one way of looking at it. It could have been penned by Samuel Beckett or Jean Paul Sartre, since it is a pure existential drama. We’ll get to that in a bit.

Like any good horror movie, Cube starts with something like a scare. A man named Alderson (Julian Richings) moves through cube-shaped rooms through square doors set in the middle of the walls. The rooms appear to be identical except for the color of the walls. After a few rooms, we hear a click and Alderson stops in his tracks. Moments later, he, well, is diced by some sort of razor wire grid that snaps down from the ceiling.