Splice

Vincenzo Natali's film about "two young rebellious scientists" who "defy legal and ethical boundaries and forge ahead with a dangerous experiment: splicing together human and animal DNA to create a new organism" received very good reviews (75% on rottentomatoes). Why, I don't know.

First off, as the summary suggests, the film features every imaginable (and unimaginatively used) cliché about "science gone wrong." Starting of course, with the improbably attractive and young scintist couple. It is then smothered by all the possible clichés involving psychoanalysis (I won't go into detail to avoid spoilers). I do not look forward to read scores of student essays in the forthcoming years on "A Psychoanalytical Analysis of Splice."

But what really enraged me about the movie is its claims to universality. This human/animal splice named "Dren" grows up superfast so we get to see all of its developmental phases. And without a TV to look at, or humans to talk to, it adopts all the typical "Western" attitudes towards gender, clothing, behavior, etc. Because that's how "natural" people act surely.