Splice

Splice – 2009, Vincenzo Natali

Genetic engineering goes horribly wrong in tense sci-fi horror. Sounds unoriginal and uninteresting, so it’s no surprise that even with a promising international trailer (‘Embed disabled by request’. Lame) Splice went by quite unnoticed.

The premise of Splice isn’t anything new; ambitious scientist take an experiment in ‘gene splicing’ too far and it’s all aboard to The Island of Dr Moreau, but this time it’s well written enough to rise above the usual B-Movie status.

The protagonists are scientists and lovers Adrian ‘Oscar Curse’ Brody and Sarah ‘been in loads of films but you still won’t recognise her’ Polley. At first they come across as un-likable, annoyingly cool, hip young scientist prodigy ‘nerds’. They live in a cool apartment surrounded by cool Japanese art and stuff and even in the lab they wear expensive and stylish clobber. As with all modern day would-be Frankensteins, their geeky ambition in the face of corporate pressure leads then to stay up late and, via Science Montage, isolate that elusive genome or whatever. And so what if we use human DNA, we’ll just destroy the embryo after a few cell divisions right?

Wrong. A monster is created. It starts out as the freaky rabbit thing from the clip and quickly grows into a super fast, super strong, almost human being. Things progress slightly predictably, but the lead characters are given enough subtly revealed background history to flesh them out and make their rash behaviour believable. Adrian and Sarah aren’t just crazy scientists, they progress from enthusiastic creators to unwilling custodians to loving parents to jealous lovers, all within a well paced 100 minutes.

The creature effects are well designed and executed and the director achieves just the right mix of suspense, gore, shocks and sexual tension that are vital to any horror (although it’s not a Horror horror if you know what I mean). About half way through the action relocates from the laboratory setting to the familiar creepy barn near the creepy woods, which seems a little lazy and clichéd but it makes sense to the plot and probably helped keep the budget modest. It’s cheaper to film things happening in the dark after all.

Good stuff all round, as good as my other favourite under the radar sci-fi film from 2009, Surrogates.

I was pleased to hear that Mr Natali is going to take the reigns of the long awaited Neuromancer adaptation.

Surrogates

Surrogates – 2009, Jonathan Mostow

I’m sure I saw a trailer for this in a cinema at some point earlier in the year, which implies it had at least a limited release, but I’m not so sure it didn’t just go straight to DVD outside the US. Although it wouldn’t be the first Bruce Willis film to slip under the radar (anyone ever see Hart’s War, or Tears Of The Sun?). I think it’s overexposure that has caused Bruce to become less of a draw than he was; he’s been in at least two or three films a year since 1988. I’m sure he’d be the first to tell you he should have been more picky.

I think Surrogates is one of his better choices. If someone had told me after I’d watched it that it was based on a novel by Philip K Dick, or it was written by Andrew Niccol I’d have believed them. It was in fact based upon a short running comic book by a guy called Robert Venditti (short lived by design, not because it was discontinued as far as I can gather).

‘Surrogates’ refers to the remotely controlled robots that the people of the future use to life out their life. What started as a mobility aid for the disabled has become an eternal youth for the majority of the people of the world. The trailer explains what’s going on:



If the plot looks predictable, that’s because it is, but in this case, I don’t think it detracts from the film.

The reason Surrogates is so reminiscent of Phillip K Dick’s work is because it takes place in a future where most people don’t seen very happy, and some technological advance has occurred that changes or affects everyone’s lives. Phil’s books, like a lot of sci-fi, tend to revolve around one Big Idea which in itself is interesting and original, but doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny when the central concept of the idea is questioned.

The best example of this is his 1968 novel ‘Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?’ which was adapted into the 1982 movie Blade Runner. The story is about androids, who are almost completely indistinguishable from humans, who have super human strength and intelligence and are created solely for the purpose of working in the harsh conditions of Martian colonies. These androids are almost completely human, but their big flaw is that they cannot develop or process emotions properly and completely lack empathy. So when they eventually go crazy and return to Earth from Mars and start killing people, android bounty hunters are called in to take care of them. This all makes for a riveting story, but it begs the question ‘Why would they make inherently psychopathic robots in the first place?’ I think that Blade Runner does a better job of brushing over this little problem than the novel, and it seems to be the case than a lot of the films based on the works of Phillip K Dick are better than the novels that inspired them.

Surrogates suffers from the same kind of problem; it presents the audience with a particular future world scenario, then requires the audience to accept that scenario without thinking too hard about how plausible it is. The film brushes over a lot of the implications the scenario might have on society and focuses on the ones that are important to the story being told.

Surrogates is one of those rare films that is greater than the sum of it’s parts. The premise is flawed and the plot is predictable but it’s incredibly watchable because of the events that take place with the Surrogates. There is a sub plot about Bruce’s deteriorating relationship with his wife which is more interesting than the main story. If this were an independent foreign language film about people living out their lives through idealised robot versions of themselves, it would be lauded as a ‘compelling study of human relationships, and society’s obsessions with youth and beauty’. But it’s not. It’s a Hollywood sci fi action film without much action, and yet...so much more.

Gattaca

Gattaca – 1997, Andrew Niccol



Andrew Noccol makes lovely films. It sounds a little condescending to say it like that but its the best way to describe them. He’s not made many, and his two best films (this and S1m0ne) have been his least successful, and may have contributed to the fact that he has made so few. Niccol’s first three films; Gattaca, The Truman Show (which he wrote but didn’t direct) and S1m0ne are all ‘lightweight’ sci-fi films set firmly in our world, but just outside our reality. They are all well written and have a good cast, but never really performed financially, maybe because they were so hard to market. It’s difficult to promote an intelligent non-indie film (hence the existence of ‘independent’ film studio like Fox Searchlight and Sony Pictures Classics).

Gattaca is set in a future where newborns have their blood tested to determine their genetic predispositions and therefore their lot in life. The rich can pay for their offspring to be genetically enhanced. The practice of liberal eugenics creates a society of unofficial genetic discrimination. Ethan Hawke’s character is born on the wrong side of the line, a genetic reject, so to achieve his dream of becoming an astronaut he pretends to be the genetically perfect Jude Law. A murder within the astronaut training facility puts his plan in jeopardy but luckily Ethan can rely on the help of a young Uma Thurman.

Niccol’s great achievement is to create a believable future on a small scale. Though set in the future, Gattaca has a 1930s noir look. The method of creating a world of the future by recreating the look of a past period has been done before and since; if you want to make a film set in the future, make it look like another time, even one from the past. Gattaca achieves the balance of future / retro just right. The limits of the budget are well hidden, the plot revolves around Hawke’s character trying to go into space, but there are no spaceships or anything far fetched and space aged to be seen. The best sci-fi films are often the ones with minimal props and special effects, as a result they age very well.

One possible criticism of Gattaca would be that it is slow and perhaps even boring in parts, but Mr Niccol is a man with a clear vision which he is very capable of bringing to life on screen, and if he wants to take his time that’s fine with me. If only the Studio Moneymen felt that way... but what’s this? Three new Niccol films on the horizon, ‘Im.Immortal’ sounds interesting, and typically Niccolian.

The Island

The Island – 2005, Michael Bay

The right people must like Michael Bay to let him make films in the first place, let alone to have continued after the box office flop that was The Island. I know it’s easy to rip it out of Michael Bay, but he is crap, especially when he does the ‘spin the camera around the actor’ bullshit.

So why did I watch The Island? ‘Cos I like Sci-Fi. And Sean Bean.

‘Gattica’ meets ‘Minority Report’ with more product placement than ‘I,Robot’. The whole story about clones raised to donate body parts was taken from a 1979 film and DreamWorks had to pay a million bucks after libel action was taken. There’s a good cast including Sean Bean as the bad guy and that moody looking black dude from ‘Blood Diamond’. Lots of nice sets and props, but still not really worth putting on your list.

Bad Trailer = Poor Box Office

Primer

Primer – 2004, Shane Carruth

Very clever Sci-Fi film made for $7,000. An excellent example of what you can do with a little money and a lot of imagination/hard work/a degree in mathematics. Basically it’s about a dude who invents a time machine, so naturally it all goes wrong and gets very hard to follow. Definitely the type of film you’d want to read about on Wikipedia afterwards.

It’s full of techy guys mumbling about physics, and if you stop listening at the wrong moment, you’ll lose track of what’s going on sooner than if you’d been listening intently, but you’ll lose track either way.

That may not sound like much of an endorsement, but I would recommend Primer to anyone who likes a film they have to pay attention to. If you liked ‘Brick’ you’ll like Primer.