In Volume 1, Episode 17 of the Cinefantastique Podcast, Dan Persons Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski delve into the worlds of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, unraveling the mysteries of genetic engineering and bad parenting as they analyze Splice, Vincenzo Natali's thoughtful variation on the old "mad scientists create a monster" scenario.
Matt Casamassina of IGN wrote that "the separation between safe exploration and puzzling and run-for-your-life monster scenarios is too transparent and as a result you will inevitably come to fear the ice and few things else".
In recognising this, and in avoiding the easy narrative tensions offered by moral simplification, Ammaniti sets a new standard in post-apocalyptic fiction, while creating a world that, populated by desperate innocents, proves far more frightening than any stock cannibals-in-monster-trucks scenario.
Its makers do a terrific job of marrying completely off-the-wall monsters and scenarios with ostensibly mundane environments.
As I've posted before, sharks are not the monster in this scenario, we humans are.
To combat their nerves (and make some memories), they decided to Photoshop monster movie-inspired scenarios and send them to Andre as hourly updates on his baby's wellbeing.
In a dream scenario, the monster storm and its terrible destruction along the East Coast would end the influence of climate deniers in Washington.
This isn't the nerve-jangling scariness of isolation and dark, but the fully fun scariness of a monster that creates elaborate scenarios to mess you up.
It's a standard science-fiction scenario, man against monster, but there's a twist: it turns out that the soldier and his cohort have brain implants that make them see the faces and bodies of their targets as monstrous, to hear their pleas for mercy as noxious squeaks.
These three plots collide with an "X-Files" scenario involving a scary monster ("Alien -sticky) Alien -sticky governmentandscientific conspiracy (creepily clean).
And it functions capably as a monster movie: a classic "Body Snatchers" scenario, in which the converted become the agents of further conversions, it's creepy and suspenseful in the usual, popular ways.
