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By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Science fiction and horror have overlapped ever since the first science fiction story, Frankensteinreaders are amazed with the amoral scientist and his efforts to create life. Over two hundred years later, scientists taking experiments too far has remained a recurring trope of sci-fi, including the 2009 box office bomb that pushed the envelope a little too far, according to most critics . spicea small-scale story about two scientists raising a human-animal hybrid, steeped in discussions of scientific ethics before, as always, all hell breaks loose.
God’s Play Scientists
Scientists Clive and Elsa, played respectively by Academy award winners Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, succeeded in creating two amorphous creatures called Fred and Ethel as proof that their genetic research was on the right track. Quietly, without letting their bosses know, the two manage to create Dren, named after the young saw their shirts with “NERD” written on them and spelled backwards. It’s a cute moment, and the young Dren is a highlight spicebut if experiments always went right, no one would be interested in anyone sci-fi film.
spice takes place mainly in an abandoned farm, where Clive and Elsa can raise Dren away from prying eyes and also to save some money on the budget because you can tell that most of the effort went towards the an animal-human hybrid creature. Dren ages quickly, becoming a “teenage,” where he is played by French ballerina Delphine Chaneac, who does a great job of conveying Dren’s emotions without saying a single word.
Compared to more classic versions of body horror, from many works David Cronenberg to the more recent Substance, spice not quite as annoying, not in the classic “ick” fashion one would expect. Instead, the film turns Dren into a strange hybrid who is attractive and, with her large, anime-style eyes, clearly capable of emotion, so the horror comes from realizing that this being who n obviously unnaturally intelligent, capable of higher levels of thought but yet. , is the product of an illegal experiment.
A Slow Burn That Catches Fire
The film gets a lot of mileage out of characters discussing the ethics of scientific research, what counts as intelligent life, and where Dren fits into the world now that she’s here. That part of spice is well done, and for frequent scenes of dialogue and argument, it is compelling and reflective. This makes the frantic last minute third act sequence all the more horrifying when it arrives and completely changes the tone of the film to one of pure horror.
Even with the twist ending, spice It became a hit with critics, even winning praise from Roger Ebert, but was largely ignored at the box office. Against a budget of $30 million, the film took in $28 million, and while the marketing budget was minimal, it didn’t even recoup the production budget, relying on DVD and Blu-Ray releases to help the film to make a small profit. A dialogue-heavy sci-fi drama that veers into body horror isn’t an easy sell, and while the film has attracted a small following, it’s still not at that cult classic level, and now, 15 years after its release , that ship has sailed.
You can test spice and judge for yourselves on Max. Just be warned, there are a few moments and images from the film that will burn themselves into your brain after you’ve seen them, and whatever you do, they’ll be hard to forget. Don’t let the opening 15 minutes fool you; it earns that R rating by going from 0 to 100 in the span of 5 seconds once that last act kicks in.
