Vincenzo Natali’s latest is a weird, interesting, and often messed up creature feature that isn’t the horror movie it is being sold as until the third act, in which it pretty much wastes all of its well earned curiosity and enjoyment by going from something almost wholly original to riddled with cliché.
The film follows a couple of married and childless scientists who are the leaders in their field of cloning/creating organisms for industry to create vaccines, proteins, and other helpful substances for animals/livestock health benefits. Right as the two make their biggest breakthrough yet, their research is halted and instead are assigned to making their latest breakthrough profitable as fast as possible. The couple’s next step in their research was to introduce human DNA into their creature and hopefully get results that will allow their research results be applied to the benefit of humans. When faced with the prospect of being delayed from making this breakthrough for possibly a number of years as they slave under the bidding of their sponsors the couple decides to move forward with their research in secret in hopes of making the breakthrough to show that this project should be their focus. The results, after much trial and error, turn out to be more than they could have ever imagined and their relationship with their creation becomes something completely unexpected.
