Adrien Brody, why didn't you just kill the thing here? Instead you let it live for another hour to kill your career.

You could see this movie, THAT is the worst that could happen. I’m not going to over exaggerate and say that your spouse leaving you, your dog dying and your truck getting stolen would still be a better fate than watching Splice, but country songs really should be written about this movie.  The hope was that this movie would get some re-editing, but it didn’t.  Every terrible nuance, over used and tacky cliche was still present.  This movie will be the forever go-to bad example of film.

Which is mind bending, because you can actually find good reviews for it.  In fact, the most famous of all critics, Roger Ebert, calls this movie “…well done, and intriguing.”  Mr. Ebert, were we watching the same reel?  Sarah Polleys acting was terrible, the direction was poor, the writing was annoying, the dialogue was laughable, the plot stunk, characterization was absent, there was no real rising action, it was all pay-off without set-up.  The CG was well done and the only intriguing thing about this movie was that it got released.

As to the why Warner Bros. picked it up and gave it a wide release (2,400 theaters) is a mystery.  But one could guess that they bought it for a relatively cheap sum, and seeing as the advertising campaign was minimal, the studio must be banking on making a little cash off of it due to the American public being willing to watch anything these days.  I will be keeping a very close eye on how this movie fares at the box office, and an early estimate shows that opening day it made $2.7 million.  As far as movies with similar releases:  28 Days Later, which was released in only 1,200 theaters, made $3.4.  Considering 28 Days had a production budget of $8 million and Splice is coming in at $28 million, there’s a noticeable difference.  Daybreakers, considered pretty bad cinema, released in 2,500 theaters grossed $5.8 million, but quickly died down to only about $475,000 two Fridays later.  So our genetic themed story isn’t doing so well.  I’m guessing a gross in the six digits by next weekend and a drop from first run theaters by the fourth week.

I really hope it doesn’t do well, because a sequel hinges on how the public responds to it.  Despite it maintaining a 70%+ on Rotten Tomatoes,  a 7.2 on IMDB and its three stars from Ebert, my forecast is that not even the payed-off critics will save Splice from being resigned to blockbuster failure.  What I find interesting is director Vincenzo Natali and others attached to the project had very high hopes for it.  Too bad for them, because from the many reports I’ve read about their hopes, it seems they were hoping for a miracle hit, IE District 9.  Unfortunately they didn’t have a big name attached to it, an ultra-wide release, or an entirely amazing movie like D9.

What they did have was a snowballs chance in hell.  Bottom line, don’t go see this movie.  I saw it at Sundance (you can find that initial review on this site) and only saw it the second time to see if anything would be different.  The only difference was that Splice was a lot worse the second time around.  The first time it was bad, so bad it was laughable.  The second time it was just pure pain.  I will have an easier time accepting String Theory with its eleven dimensions than Splice as a serious piece of cinema.  It will also be much easier to comprehend the size of the universe than how anyone might consider this movie anything but horrible.