What Do The Critics Say?

"Polley and Brody are both terrific, delivering complex, edgy performances that are thrilling to watch. Hugely entertaining, superbly written sci-fi thriller that manages to be simultaneously scary, moving and darkly funny, thanks to strong direction, great special effects and terrific performances from its three leads. Vincenzo Natali maintains an impressively controlled tone throughout. It's also easily one of the best genre films of the year. Highly recommended." Matthew Turner VIEW LONDON "It's refreshing to see a genre movie that credits its audience with a bit of intelligence, and Splice has got a lot going on under the bonnet. Films like Splice don't come along often. It's not perfect, but it is gripping, original and spine-janglingly shocking. Anyone who values quality horror needs to see this." Robbie Collin NEWS OF THE WORLD "While it doesn't hold back on delivering the odd moment of outlandish gore, it also turns out to be way funnier, freakier and more perverted than its Frankenstein-style story suggests." Alistair Harkness THE SCOTSMAN "The Frankenstein myth is the oldest story in the sci-fi lexicon, and the basis of everything from Jurassic Park to Species to The Island of Dr Moreau. But the dire consequences of meddling with nature haven't been explored quite so well for quite some time as in Vincenzo Natali's Splice, a movie that must have Natali's countryman David Cronenberg wishing he'd taken a patent out on the DNA of the Canadian psycho-sexual horror flick." Nick Dent BRISBANE SUNDAY MAIL "Splice is the best film tossed up by the horror genre in some time. A compelling and intelligent horror film which twists genre conventions to deliver something excitingly new. Smartly directed with subtlety and restraint, brilliantly performed by a superb cast at the top of their game, and never getting caught up in the tripwires of its own considerable ambitions, Splice is the very definition of intelligent horror." Erin Free FILMINK "Scene for scene, Splice has been my favorite film experience this year and it gave me more pleasure than a spate of bloated pictures that have left me feeling whipped, numb, or perhaps worse, that indeterminate "it was okay" space somewhere between. I left Splice feeling exhilarated: horribly, deliriously happy with this monstrously ghoulish little movie. The perfect synthesis of horror and the horrifically funny. My favorite film experience this year." Richard Knight WINDY CITY TIMES

"Natali puts his own twisted spin on the tale that ensures a few surprises along the way." Jason Zingale BULLZEYE "Will torment both your stomach and your brain in equal measure." Thomas Leupp HOLLYWOOD.COM "Gets under your skin for both creepy crawly and emotional gains." Jordan Hoffman UGO "A surprisingly good sci-fi adventure made even better by the acting talents of Brody and Polley." Jackie K Cooper JACKIEKCOOPER.COM "It hit me hard and deep. It's a work of sick beauty." Rob Gonsalves eFILMCRITIC "A timely and well-considered thriller about the scarier aspects of genetic engineering." Jeff Shannon SEATTLE TIMES "Splice is smart, thought-provoking and grim." Linda Cook QUAD CITY TIMES "An intelligent horror film that chips away at the emotions and the intellect." Andrea Chase KILLER MOVIE REVIEWS "Daring, disturbing and deliciously twisted." Tom Long DETROIT NEWS "Simply the best horror movie from a Canadian filmmaker since The Fly." Jim Slotek JAM! MOVIES "A mixture of the intimately known and the wildly unpredictable, this one just is what it is: a total trip." Michelle Orange MOVIELINE

The Inside Story In 1998, Vincenzo Natali was riding high on the astonishing success of "Cube". Ready to move on to his next feature, he had shown a script for a short film called "Mutants", written in 1995, to producer Steve Hoban. They had become friends while Natali had worked for Hoban as a storyboard artist on "Blood & Donuts" and "Ginger Snaps", and took the relationship to the next level when Hoban had produced Natali’s Canadian Film Centre short, "Elevated". Hoban, whose corporate Zen-like nature is to wait for the right project at the right time, offered friendly counsel, but felt the story was far from camera ready. By 1999, the script had morphed from short format to theatrical, complete with a name change to "Splice", and attracted the interest of Robert Lantos, who had just left Alliance Atlantis and opened Serendipity Point Films. Splice was a contender for their inaugural film, but was sidelined in favour of "Men with Brooms". For years the project languished, largely because, according to Natali, the special effects associated with creating Dren at the time were greater than the budget allocated to the film. It was not until 2005 when Hoban was in Los Angeles visiting Natali, that the frustration finally reached a breaking point. The two men had crossed paths repeatedly over the years. They had teamed up as director and producer on "Nothing" in 2003, at which point their friendship truly blossomed. But Natali had gone off on his own to make "Cypher" while Hoban had completed the "Ginger Snaps" trilogy as well as the short film, "Ryan", directed by Chris Landreth, that went on to win an Oscar. One afternoon, they decided to hike up to the Hollywood sign and by the time they got to the top, Natali blurted out, "Why aren’t we making Splice?" "Up to that point, I wasn’t ready to jump on the project," says Hoban, "but I was excited about working with Vincenzo again. We looked at his contracts with Serendipity and figured there was a way, financially, to make this work. The next thing we did was to take the previous drafts of the script, put Vincenzo together with his writing partner and they turned out a new draft in 2006. It worked. It was a modern day Frankenstein with depth and it captured all the ambitions of his original inspiration. It was at that point, we brought on co-writer Doug Taylor ("They Wait") and I became officially involved." Ultimately, the dark cloud of delay was in fact the silver lining. "What changed was the sophistication of digital technology. In 2000, digital effects, such as widening Dren’s eyes, would have been time-consuming and, consequently, prohibitively expensive," Hoban (who came from an IMAX background where he established and ran their R&D facility to create and design computer animation technology) explained. In 2000, Hoban produced "Cyberworld 3D" which was lauded by Roger Ebert as "remarkable not only for what it shows us, but for the wider world of 3-D animation it predicts." What Natali wanted to do was even more advanced than the creation of the revolutionary character Gollum in Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" which picked up the Oscar for Best Effects, Visual Effects in 2001, '02 & 04 (Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, Randall William Cook & Alex Funke). And to that end, Steve Hoban was the producer Natali wanted on his film, "Splice". "Steve has all the skills necessary to make the kind of movies I want to make and one of those skills is to understand special effects and new technologies. I trust him. He’s like the other half of my brain. He grounds me and helps make the best choices. And it’s all about making the right choices. He’s a great ally." From then on, eveything began to happen for Natali. In the next three months, everything that hadn't happened in the previous years, began to happen in quick succession. Don Murphy ("Natural Born Killers" & "Transformers"), who Natali had met after "Cube", had just formed a production company, Angry Bull, with Guillermo del Toro. "I knew Don was the real thing when I walked into his office and it could have been a toy shop. He’s the genuine article, pure geek. He’s not a Hollywood guy." Over the years, Murphy had given Natali scripts to consider, but he had always turned them down. In 2005, Natali met Del Toro at Fantasporto in Portugal where "Nothing" won its only award, and after talking long into the night over dinner, Del Toro has said he would like to work with him. This time, Natali decided to turn the tables and sent Splice to Murphy. "We had a conversation about the script after Guillermo read it. He helped me so much by putting his name on it and that gave us the stamp of legitimacy. It’s a great marriage because Guillermo loves monsters and this is a movie where we empathize with our monster." Guillermo’s feeling was that he found it to be "Splice", "incredibly powerful, morally ambiguous, dangerous. In so many ways it crossed the line, which I think is part of what the horror/science fiction genre should do is to cross those lines and the reason why I felt uncomfortable with it is the reason why I ultimately decided to participate in Splice." A multitude of influences came together to inspire the story and the filming of Splice. As a child, Natali was bewitched by monsters. During his 'Plasticine Age', he would make models of dinosaurs. By twelve, he had his first camera, a Super 8, and had taken a children’s course on stop-motion animation, and started to make movies of giant monsters trouncing cities. "I’d need a psychiatrist to explain my relationship with monsters," Natali recalls. "I’ve been obsessed with them since I can remember." He was a devoted follower of the Universal horror films, favouring the James Whale films, in particular, "Frankenstein", also popular with Guillermo del Toro. In some ways, these movies would be considered predecessors to "Splice" because they were influenced by the German Expressionists. Natali appreciates that his filmic influences are many and contradictory. "I’m a Star Wars baby. I saw it when I was eight years old. That’s the movie that made me want to make movies." The work of Stanley Kubrick is where Natali learned about style and composition, specifically symmetry, although he regards it as a bit of an affectation. "Vincenzo has a really strong inclination towards balanced compositions that play on symmetry and asymmetry," 2010 Excellence in ADG Production Design Award winner Production Designer Todd Cherniawsky ("Avatar") says. "He likes to play with a very strong one-point perspective composition which is essentially shooting straight down the middle of a room, straight into a wall so everything converges into one point and the eye is drawn to one central point." So, what is the theme of Natali's latest film? "Splice is a movie where we watch the people turn into monsters, whereas the creature remains quite innocent. It really is a psycho-drama as much as it is a creature flick and that's what distinguishes it from all the Frankenstein clones. "Splice" is also a critique of the X/Y generations, which Clive and Elsa typify. They are smarter than they are wise, and while they can play with the building blocks of life, they really don't have any deep understanding of what life is." "What I love about this story is that it shows how young people can be so enthusiastic about something and, theoretically, it is a very positive thing," said Oscar winning actor Adrien Brody. Brody ("Oxygen" & "The Village") who plays Clive Nicoli offers a word of warning: "but history has proven that young people are careless." Five time Genie Award winning actress Sarah Polley (including the Claude Jutra Award in 2010), who was cast as Elsa Kast notes: "There’s something horrific about what we are capable of doing right now as humans in terms of science. There’s also something fantastic and magical about it and ultimately really hopeful. This film is useful because it explores the worst that can happen; and it’s important to explore the worst possible scenario because it helps to assuage some of our fears about it and then we can put that away and think rationally." "Splice is character-driven, so we needed strong actors who had done quality work and possessed the 'cool' factor," Hoban says. "We were also looking for actors with significant box office fame. And finally, because this is a 'ripped from the headlines' kind of story, reality is a critical component of this movie." Brody ("Predators" & "The Darjeeling Limited") admits: "My first career goal in life was to be a space scientist. I wanted to explore the unknown." "Sadly, my math skills weren’t up to par." Brody first got a taste for the magic of science-fiction movies with "King Kong" and "Splice", offered him an opportunity to return to the genre. "It’s a wonderful script that’s funny, scary and dramatic. Initially, I felt a lot of pressure because the genetics and the technical aspects which are very complicated, so the research I did was important." "Adrien’s performance is fantastic," Hoban notes. "He’s believable, he’s magnetic, and you care about him. What Adrien did in Splice is possibly the closest representation of himself that he has ever done on film." "Elsa is extremely ambitious and extremely focused," Polley observes. "She’s a cannonball of life and energy, yet there is much in her life that she has not dealt with that’s ruling her. She’s bursting with far too much life for one human being to contain, so she pushes things to their final conclusion whether or not they are good for her or everyone else." Natali and Hoban knew they had made the right choice in casting as early as the first rehearsals. The chemistry was there. The repartee was there. The laughter was there. Brody was impressed by his experience on set. "Vincenzo is a remarkable human being. He’s probably the kindest director I’ve worked with. He’s incredibly sweet and generous and gives great direction, so it’s a very lovely combination. He gives me a lot of freedom with choices." Usually, science fiction positions scientists as the solution to the problem, the fixers. In "Splice", they, by their own actions, become the source of the carnage through their creation, Dren. The inspiration for Dren is a fusion of science and the Greek mythological chimera, a lion in the forepart, a goat in the middle, and a dragon behind. What is unexpected about her is her delicate beauty. In the pantheon of seductive female creatures in film, she has few peers. Natali says he "wanted Dren to be a creature whose humanity we fall in love with." Dren is played by two actors, Delphine Chaneac as adult Dren and Abigal Chu as toddler Dren. "Even though we did extensive R&D on the creature development, the concept is so subtle that there was no way to complete Dren without having Delphine and Abigail there. You couldn’t draw it," Natali says. And unlike Gollum, Dren was never intended to be fully digital. Parisian-born Delphine Chanéac describes Dren as "quite sensitive and pure, like a child, yet very aggressive at the same time. It took a great deal of concentration to play this emotions because of the extra physical demands." What's It All About?

Superstar genetic engineers Clive and Elsa specialize in splicing together DNA from different animals to create incredible new hybrids. Now they want to use human DNA in a hybrid that could revolutionize science and medicine. Both Clive and Elsa are convinced the company should move to the next stage, but, with massive amounts of research and money already invested, the pharmaceutical company that funds their research forbids it. Clive and Elsa decide to secretly conduct their own experiments. The result is an amazing, strangely beautiful creature, unlike anything they could have imagined. Clive wants to kill it but Elsa refuses. It soon exhibits uncommon intelligence and an array of unexpected physical developments. Dren, as they call it, will exceed their wildest, imaginable dreams: until she begins to grow and learn at an accelerated rate; threatening to become a living nightmare.

The Verdict "When I first saw the trailer for "Splice" my immediate thought was, "will people take this film seriously?" For some, the prospect of rogue, genetic engineering going on somewhere in the world is not only worrisome, but a distinct possibility. Yet, while the 'what if' factor surrounding the science is unsettling, there are those who are fascinated by the propect that one day, humankind may, for arguements sake, find itself in a world where cloning is part of everyday life. But 'what if' it all went horribly wrong? What would be the consequences of mixing DNA to generate a new generation of creatures. That's the question "Splice" poses. Scientists Clive and Elsa have alreay created two creatures named Fred and Ginger, but when they undertake, without authority, their own secret experiment to create a creature using animal and human DNA they are pushing the boundaries. Eventually they succeed. Clive recognizes the danger immediately, but Elsa won't allow him to end their creations life. Secrecy is everything and despite all the warning signs they push ahead. While you may think you have seen it all before, believe me: you haven't. The tension and danger builds throughout as Dren undergoes remarkable changes, all of which are superbly created thanks to a mix of CGI and the use of real actresses. Her transformation is stunning and what transpires as she evolves will have you on the edge of your seat. From its innocuous beginning to a finale with a superb twist (leaving open the possibilty of a sequel), "Splice" is filled with surprises. Highly recommended. Very entertaining. 4 1/2 STARS." Who Is Playing Who?

Adrien Brody Sarah Polley Delphine Chanéac Brandon McGibbon Simona Maicanescu David Hewlett Abigail Chu

... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Clive Elsa Dren Gavin Joan Chorot William Barlow Child Dren

The Production Team

Director Screenplay Story Producer Original Music Cinematography Film Edior Casting Production Design Art Direction Costume Design

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Vincenzo Natali Vincenzo Natali/Antoinette Terry Bryant/Doug Taylor Vincenzo Natali & Antoinette Terry Bryant Steven Hoban Cyrille Aufort Tetsuo Nagata Michele Conroy John Buchan/Constance Demontoy/Jason Knight Todd Cherniawsky Joshu de Cartier Alex Kavanagh

Run Time 104 minutes Rated MA15+ [AUST] Copyright ©2010 - Lionsgate - All Rights Reserved ©1999-2010 The Movie Pages & impact Internet Services. All Rights Reserved. Protected by Australian and International Copyright. Trademark Laws and Intellectual Property Rights apply.