Interview: Splice Writer-Director Vincenzo Natali

In Splice Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley are Clive and Elsa, a talented team of genetic engineers who specialize in splicing the DNA of different animals to create hybrids. This is great and all, but the duo wants more, namely, to throw some human DNA into the mix. When the company funding their experiments gives them a big thumbs down, Clive and Elsa go ahead with it anyway and so Dren is born.

This concept didn’t just pop into writer-director Vincenzo Natali’s head out of nowhere. In fact, he was inspired by a very real experiment called the Vacanti mouse involving a mouse that appeared to have a human ear on its back. If you’ve seen some of the Splice promotion material, it’s clear that Dren is no mouse with an ear on her back; she’s a beautiful human-like creature with a handful of animalistic features.

Whether it’s the shocking natural of the material or the eerie feeling that Dren could become a reality at some point in the future, Splice is the type of movie you won’t be able to stop talking about. I was lucky enough to sit down with Natali who enlightened me not only on his film, but on the truth behind it. Check all that out and more in the video interview below and be sure to catch Splice in theaters on June 4th.

Perri Nemiroff

Staff Writer for CinemaBlend.