Directed by Vincenzo Natali. Starring Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Abigail Chu, Delphine Chanéac 18 cert, lim release, 104 min

A husband and wife push the God Complex to its outer limits in Splice, a bracingly intelligent, physically revolting, psychologically perverse thriller, writes DONALD CLARKE

THE MISGUIDED heroes of this insidiously queasy, nastily effective science-fiction shocker are, in a rather good joke, named Clive and Elsa. Students of Universal's great horror films will detect allusions to Colin Clive and Elsa Lanchester, the stars of James Whale's imperishable Bride of Frankenstein.

The comparison proves illuminating. Whereas the science in the 1933 film of Frankenstein(and in Mary Shelley's source novel, for that matter) was necessarily woolly and speculative – after all, humans wouldn't be creating life any time soon – the gene-splicing activities of our current Clive and Elsa seem only modestly implausible.

Those earlier takes on Frankensteinused the doctor's Promethean experiments as the basis for a general meditation on the dangers of scientific hubris. Though the story eventually spins off into gothic madness, Splicehangs around one increasingly urgent, naggingly real dilemma: what are our moral responsibilities towards the first animal we create?

Vincenzo Natali, director of the superior chiller Cube, signals his semi-seriousness by casting Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, stars of indie cinema, as two dizzyingly intelligent genetic scientists. As events begin, they are enjoying

the adulation resulting from their fabrication of two hideously bumpy, damp slug-things named Fred and Ginger. The animals, whose emissions may cure diseases, have been created at the behest of a stereotypically shadowy and unscrupulous conglomerate.

Unknown to Huge Nasty Corp, Clive and Elsa are, however, also hard at work on a side project. Meshing genes and shepherding runaway cells, they bring a pale, dangerously tailed female creature into the unsuspecting world. Initially resembling an animated tube of boiled tripe, the being (later christened Dren) gradually takes on some human characteristics.

After initially thinking of her as little more than a lab rat, Clive and Fred develop different classes of affection for the increasingly dangerous being. The longer the film goes on, the more inappropriate the interlocking relationships become.

We got the sense that the 1933

Dr Frankenstein, a minor aristocrat, was born into his arrogance and megalomania. In contrast, Elsa and Clive have their egos fuelled by a very modern class of fame. Recently interviewed by Wiremagazine, addicted to techno and bebop, the couple – who, significantly, argue over whether or not to have children – dress in vinyl zippy things, scatter vintage toys about their home and dine beneath Manga posters the size of Gericault masterpieces. This is Frankenstein as a younger, less polo-necked Steve Jobs.

The couple’s annoying nerd chic is never mentioned, but, a permanent undercurrent, it quietly points up their disconnection from the sweat and grind of the real world. Virtually every decision they make is the wrong one. In the later stages of the film, the writers have Clive take a step too far and he moves from morally compromised dweeb to temporarily deranged monster. At this point, the audience’s loss of sympathy makes it near impossible to identify with the young scientists’ ever more unmanageable dilemmas.

The error is, however, forgivable. Among the many reasons to recommend Spliceis its determination to test the limits of plausibility and taste. Every time you think the new species has revealed its weirdest anatomical eccentricity, it surprises you with something odder and more horrible. Each time you feel Clive and Elsa have transgressed to the limits, they find new taboos to shatter.

So, the film offers a slow build towards a gloriously extravagant, impressively gloopy conflagration. But it is mainly memorable for the awful, stomach-churning tenderness of the early scenes between the accidental parents and their horrifically confused charge. The unavoidable Freudian allusions form part of a properly disturbing essay on the average human’s uncertain feelings about reproduction and carnality.

Do not, however, fret if that sounds too snooty or self-important. Splicenever allows a minute to go past without offering the viewer something invigoratingly disgusting. Such intelligent horror pictures come along all too rarely.