ELWOOD LEE tells the director of SPLICE, VINCENZO NATALI that his gene-manipulated creature feature scared the crap out of him, and reminded him of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

Twenty years ago, if you claimed that you were able to create your own chimera by sewing a lion, goat and snake together, you would be met with derision, and people would laugh at you for daring to live the dream. Today people would still laugh at you, however your narrow-minded friends may be enlightened to the fact that that splicing different animals together is already possible. This is of course the subject that is dealt with in The Cube director Vincenzo Natali’s newest film, Splice, a sci-fi horror about an experiment concerning human and animal DNA mixed together to make a genetic Frankenstein known as ‘Dren’.

Natali himself was surprised at the rapid rate at which geneticists were assimilating DNA across different species. “I have a friend who is a geneticist, as Doug (co-writer) and myself were writing the script we would always ask whether these things were possible, and invariably he would say ‘yes’. That was the shocking thing, I began to realise what could be done in the real world was much broader than I could have possibly imagined.” In fact when Natali had begun production of the film, the creation of animal-human hybrids was legalised for medical research.

Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) are the protagonists of the film. What’s immediately striking about them is that they play genetic engineers who act and dress more like rock stars than your usual lab coat nerds, and the level of social skills amongst their teammates defies traditional stereotypes. Natali admits that although his characters were exaggerated and he didn’t base his characters on anyone specific, “George our technical consultant on the film is a nicer person, and a very good looking, smart hip guy who just happens to be a geneticist.” Also, “I found in general, while I was at the doing research at the labs, that the median age was 30, so the people there were actually pretty young.”

When asked how his lead actors felt about the Freudian aspects of the script that they had to perform, Natali has nothing but admiration for his cast. “Well they might have felt a little bit dirty, but they were very supportive. Adrien and Sarah are both tremendous and courageous actors, and they were on board directly after reading the script, so I didn’t really have to pitch it to them at all. Everyone appreciated what the film was trying to achieve, if they didn’t it would have been impossible to shoot.”

Dren herself is a masterful work of CGI blended with actual performance by French model Delphine Chanéac – not dissimilar to Avatar, but used to an eerie effect. The combination of practical work and computer visual effects paid off, as the creature in its toddler stages to adulthood looks convincingly real, but the experience of turning out state of the art visual effects on a low budget is not something the director is keen to revisit. “That’s what scary about making an independent films. I trusted my effects supervisor Bob Munroe, but the anticipation leading up to the final product was incredibly stressful. I did not have grey hair before we started, and I have more than a few right now.” Adding to the not quite right look of the creature was the sound design, to which Natali points out was almost all made up through human vocals. “We were feeling our way through the sounds in terms of Dren’s vocal patterns, she’d make clicking sounds to emote curiosity, or chirpy sounds when she’s being affectionate and of course she shrieks when she’s not happy.” When told about the clicking sounds that would frequent an episode of Skippy he remarked, “there could well be a bit of marsupial in Dren”.

The first draft script for Splice was already completed in 1998, however the road to making it was hampered by the content of the script. “None of the American studios wanted to put up the money to make it, funnily enough it took the French to make it happen, they didn’t have a problem with the sex at all.”

SPLICE opens in theatres Thursday Aug 12, rated [MA15+]. www.splicethefilm.com

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