On the one hand, I understand the reviewer's extreme reaction. This movie appears to be full of triggers one might not even know one had, and from what I can tell (I just did a run by the movie site, Wikipedia and various film-related sites), if you haven't read in-depth reviews of the piece (which don't seem to be available at the moment), you're not going to know what you're getting. Which is... well, content considered, it's bad.
Granted, the language used in the post you linked to is deliberately inflammatory, but even if the person had written a no-bullshit, no capslock review, the basic events described would be enough (for me, at least) for a visceral reaction. Gut reactions are gut reactions because they bypass the thinking portion of the brain and go straight for your hindbrain and gag reflex, and I think the writer didn't stop reacting and really think about what they'd seen before they posted. Ah the perils of posting without the intervention of thought.
By which I mean I'm in complete agreement with you concerning the reviewer's misplaced outrage. It is one thing to depict a horrific act and yet another to glorify that act. My issue is not with the presence of graphically depicted rape in a film; depiction does not constitute approval. But even if a film doesn't show approval for a certain act, the filmmaker's reasons for depicting that act can still be wrong.
If rape is depicted graphically in any form of media, for me to give that piece of media any credence there had better be a damned good reason for the graphic depiction. Going by the storyline I picked out from between the capslock and the sketchy details other sites provided, I get the impression that the act of rape was thrown in twice, not because the rape itself was important and had meaning within the context of the story, but because the act added to the general horror of the situation. Something along the lines of, THIS IS UR WARNING: splicing/genetic engineering/scientific experimentation is bad and wrong and evil and results in abominations against the laws of god and man.
Uh...huh. Old, old message, and the medium for carrying it isn't really anything novel, either. I dunno. Splice sounds like a lot of gratuitous violence and psychological horror with very little intellectual payoff. It sounds, like so many films in many genres do these days, pointless.
I'm not a film buff or even a movie fan. The last two movies I saw in a theatre were Batman Begins and Star Trek VI, and I didn't like either one of them; I went because I needed to see how bad they were going to be, and well, they lived down to my expectations. The last time I sat still for the entirety of a rented video, I was, oh, a lot younger than I am now. My point is, if it's not animation or a book, I probably won't like it; my point is, what I know about film wouldn't fill a thimble. But if Splice was a book, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to finish it.
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Granted, the language used in the post you linked to is deliberately inflammatory, but even if the person had written a no-bullshit, no capslock review, the basic events described would be enough (for me, at least) for a visceral reaction. Gut reactions are gut reactions because they bypass the thinking portion of the brain and go straight for your hindbrain and gag reflex, and I think the writer didn't stop reacting and really think about what they'd seen before they posted. Ah the perils of posting without the intervention of thought.
By which I mean I'm in complete agreement with you concerning the reviewer's misplaced outrage. It is one thing to depict a horrific act and yet another to glorify that act. My issue is not with the presence of graphically depicted rape in a film; depiction does not constitute approval. But even if a film doesn't show approval for a certain act, the filmmaker's reasons for depicting that act can still be wrong.
If rape is depicted graphically in any form of media, for me to give that piece of media any credence there had better be a damned good reason for the graphic depiction. Going by the storyline I picked out from between the capslock and the sketchy details other sites provided, I get the impression that the act of rape was thrown in twice, not because the rape itself was important and had meaning within the context of the story, but because the act added to the general horror of the situation. Something along the lines of, THIS IS UR WARNING: splicing/genetic engineering/scientific experimentation is bad and wrong and evil and results in abominations against the laws of god and man.
Uh...huh. Old, old message, and the medium for carrying it isn't really anything novel, either. I dunno. Splice sounds like a lot of gratuitous violence and psychological horror with very little intellectual payoff. It sounds, like so many films in many genres do these days, pointless.
I'm not a film buff or even a movie fan. The last two movies I saw in a theatre were Batman Begins and Star Trek VI, and I didn't like either one of them; I went because I needed to see how bad they were going to be, and well, they lived down to my expectations. The last time I sat still for the entirety of a rented video, I was, oh, a lot younger than I am now. My point is, if it's not animation or a book, I probably won't like it; my point is, what I know about film wouldn't fill a thimble. But if Splice was a book, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to finish it.