Splice… Oh, where to start? Well, the entire film is a downhill ride that never started at a precipice, if that makes sense. I spent the first thirty minutes of the film waiting on the story to kick in, and then unfortunately it did.

The story opens with two scientists, Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley), who are working at creating an animal hybrid to rid the world of disease. It starts out feeling a bit like an alien film in a futuristic science lab, but quickly makes a tone shift and finds it’s way home into our current world, and the mundane things that fill it.

With their lab funding being pulled out from under them, they decide to do the unthinkable. They create a human-animal hybrid embryo, “just to see if they can do it.” Of course, as with any sci-fi film, things go wrong and the creatures accelerated aging kicks in. Before they know it the embryo they intended to create turns into a living, breathing hybrid-human.

As the film progresses we watch the hybrid grow from a bipedal-mouse looking creature, to a small, very intelligent girl whom Elsa decides to name Dren. Clive initially keeps an emotional distance from Dren, leaving Elsa to raise her as if she were their child. But when Dren becomes a woman, things take a bazaar and extremely unnecessary turn for the worse.

In what can only be described as poor writing, Clive bonds with Dren after a bout of dancing. As he looks deeply into her reptilianesque eyes, he realizes he likes what he sees. After a bit more “plot” development, Clive and Dren fall into each others arms and begin having very passive-aggressive sex.

From here the story follows a path that most can see coming from miles away, and they will quickly be bored with it. The third act of the film attempts to tie up the lingering plot issues and poor pacing in what should have been an exciting culmination, but instead fails miserably. There is literally nothing about the third act that hasn’t been done before. I wont go into details incase you want to pick up a copy and check it out for yourself, but lets leave it at this… You have been warned.

The 1080p/VC-1 transfer is, in what will probably be the only positive thing to come from this Blu-ray, very nice. The palette of the film is filled with deep blacks, merky greens, and off-whites that are perfectly represented on screen; all while maintaining near perfect skintones.

I was so pleased to see that the film hadn’t been scrubbed, buffered, washed out, and all the other processes they use to “make a film look better.” The blacks maintain their nice, inky look, especially in contrast to the bon-fire in one specific scene. The reds of the flames are very crisp, and the blacks maintain their darkness, it’s a very well lit scene that translates great onto the Blu-Ray release.

Splice’s DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track is just as well done as it’s video counterpart. For everything that the plot does wrong the audio does right. It’s a very immersive soundtrack with a lot of pops, cracks, and sounds that draw you into the story that’s being told. Every scene has appropriate sound levels and each level is perfectly blended with the scene before and after it so there’s no need to constantly change the volume like with some films. I wouldn’t go as far as to say this is a reference quality audio transfer, but it’s definitely a good job.

I considered giving this film a .5/5 for not even having the decency to include a director’s commentary, which is all but required for a release now days, but I decided I would be generous. Much like the dud that is the film, the special features follow suit, offering just one single piece of content titled: “A Director’s Playground: Vincenzo Natali on the Set of Splice.” It’s a pretty lengthy (35 minutes) production documentary that goes behind the scenes of the film, but unfortunately it’s only presented in standard def.

As I’ve stated from the review, the story in this film is really lacking. There was potential, but it was lost rather quickly and all we were left with was this piece of science fiction drivel. The rating of 2.5 out of 5 sounds like it might be worth a watch, but let me remind you, if it weren’t for the excellent audio and video transfers, this Blu-Ray release would have found it’s way to the top of my don’t watch list. I won’t go as far as to say that you should avoid it like the plague, but I will say you should put it off until you can get a copy for next to nothing.