Some might find issue with this assertion but the other violent acts are instinctual. The sadistic act I mentioned above is committed by Elsa and is the most heinous act in the film. That correlation is exactly what happens in the latter part of the third act of the film. If the scientists had been playing attention to the details, instead of relationships, future prestige, and job concerns, they would have been able to hypothesis a possible correlation between what happened with Experiment A (blob) and Experiment B (Dren). The same happens with Dren, though in her case there is a malicious and sadistic act perpetrated against it as well. The blob creature is not supervised properly and the experiment doesn’t end favorably. The real monsters in Splice turn out to be the human element, not the creatures they create. Though some of Dren’s body features – feral and reactionary – are monstrous, resembling certain features from the aliens in The Arrival she is a child on the inside and is treated as such by the duo at the beginning. The second creature the duo clandestinely create, later dubbed Dren ( Delphine Chaneac), may contain the same benefit in larger amounts but her inception and presence grows to dominate their lives and thoughts. The first hybrid, a blob-like creature, that Clive and Elsa create is disgusting to look at but can benefit mankind. Clive and Elsa even work at a lab whose acronym is N.E.R.D., not to subtle but appropriate. They are avid readers of and are featured in WIRED magazine, their cloths are functional and comfortable, the majority completely devoid of what Miranda Priestly would call “style and a sense of fashion.” Note Brody’s checkered pants and lab coat adorned with military iron-ons and patches and the frequent Anime elements shattered around Clive and Elsa’s apartment. There are many geek elements throughout the film, giving the main characters authenticity as nerds.
The moral dilemma of what Clive Nicoli ( Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast ( Sarah Polley) are doing, could do, and choose to do, comes first. Steeped in geek-dom and centered with science fiction, Splice is a horror film where the horror comes last.