It's been a long time coming for Cube director Vincenzo Natali. Better than ten years, for those who are counting, from when the Canuck genre maven first cooked up the basic concept for Splice until he actually managed to get it made and released. To get to this point he had to write and rewrite, enlist the help of a big name producer -- Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo Del Toro -- and weather the collapse of not one but TWO successive American distributors for the film. Was it worth it? You bet.

More a cautionary fable than an out and out creature feature, Splice stars Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody as a couple -- in both senses of the word -- hotshot genetic engineers, splicing human DNA into other organisms to generate proteins and compounds useful for medicine and other purposes. But their goals are a bit higher than that. Against the wishes of their bosses -- and very much against the law -- the pair create a new life form, one made up of dominantly human DNA spliced with insect and other elements. The stated intent is just to see if they can do it. See if it'll grow and sustain itself. But when the time comes to abort their mutant fetus they just can't do it. Or won't. But they can't keep it in the lab, either.

And so baby Dren comes home and creates one of the more dysfunctional on-screen families of recent times. This is Frankenstein as parental figure, the imagery made all the more potent thanks to the fact that this is actually possible -- in theory, at least -- and in labs all around the world scientists are asking the same questions and playing with the same toys that Polley and Brody do here to disastrous results.

Interesting, though, that Natali places the disaster in the home, not the lab. Yes, this is a 'science run amok' film, but not in the sense that we're used to seeing. The end of the world is not imminent. Technology is not going to destroy creation. But Dren surely becomes a catalyst for change -- as often as not disturbing change -- in her human surrogate parents. Mother has control issues. Father has problems with self-control. Both aren't so great on the communication front. And neither has a clear understanding of the true nature of what they've birthed. A disturbing view of both science and adolescence, Splice is one potent, unique piece of work.