Behold: the birth of a human-designed creature! It’s the second of its kind—a gross, slimy monstrosity about the size of a football. The scientists responsible, who happen to be dating, are Elsa and Clive (Sarah Polly and Adrien Brody). They drive a Gremlin. They eat pizza at work (because movie scientists always eat pizza). They think their designer creature is cute. And this will become relevant later on: Clive wants kids while Elsa doesn’t mind waiting.
The scientists are on the cusp of curing all the bad things that tend to happen to the human body. Naturally, bureaucrats conspire to take the project away. The scientists’ lofty goals simply aren’t profitable to the company’s investors. Polly pushes forward with the research anyway. It results in something that resembles a human fetus outside the womb. Now they’ve got something on their hands that was highly unethical to make in the first place. Getting rid of it is even more so.
The scientists attempt to keep the creature a secret, but this causes one complication after another. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll be waiting for the routine horror stuff to begin any second. Thankfully, the movie doesn’t become routine until the last seven minutes or so. By then, it’s earned it. Its horror is bizarre, cerebral, and wonderfully gross a lá David Cronenberg’s The Fly. The “monster” (and I’m really trying not to give too much away here) has more in common with Frankenstein’s than you might suspect.
So do you like body horror? This picture’s got it. You like dance scenes? There’s a pretty unique one, I guess you could say. You like movies that really aren’t for the faint of heart? Then step right up. Sure, sometimes you kinda know where it’s going, but that’s part of the fun: watching characters on a slow motion collision course with outcomes that could have been easily avoided earlier, but can’t be avoided now.
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