For a monster movie, Splice has a lot of things going for it. It's produced by Guillermo del Toro. It stars Adrien Brody, who won the best actor Oscar for The Pianist. And it has a premise ripped straight from the headlines: The plot centers on a pair of scientists, played by Brody and Sarah Polley, who have decided to throw professional ethics to the wind by splicing together human and animal DNA to create a new hybrid organism.
Shades of The Island of Doctor Moreau, sure, but science has come a long way since the time of H.G. Wells, so it really could happen. Of course, there will be consequences. It is, after all, a cautionary tale, as del Toro emphasizes in a clip introducing the movie.
In this first clip from Splice though, the scientists are won over by their cute, though somewhat deformed, mutant baby, who is destined to turn into a "beautiful, but dangerous winged human-chimera" before things go horribly wrong.