Frankenstein's Daughter [Review: Splice]

Vincenzo Natali's film Splice is a modern-day take on the Frankenstein theme. Two scientists, Elsa and Clive (Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody) decide to make a baby - the genetic way - but their Artificial Life chimaeras are not freaky enough so they add in some human DNA. The result is Dren, two parts Frankenstein's monster to one part ET, who is brought up in a store room and then an abandoned farm. Delphine Chanéac plays Dren for much of the film and this is an intense performance.

The moral of this story is: scientists should not be allowed to have babies. Ever. Dren is mistreated and abused by the pair in the name of science, love or science and love. For Elsa (Sarah Polley) her own shaky family background comes back to haunt her - and drives her increasingly erratic behaviour. There's no similar explanation for Clive's equally bizarre and shocking treatment of Dren towards the end of the film.

Chekov's Crossbow [Review: The Host]

"If you show a gun in the first act it had better have been fired by the third act" - Alfred Hitchcock, presumably paraphrasing Anton Chekov.

The Host (not to be confused with The Host by Stephenie Meyer, reviewed here) is a Korean horror film and one of the greatest monster films ever: the story of one dysfunctional, bickering family's quest to rescue schoolgirl Hyun-Seo from a gigantic newt-like creature that has emerged from the polluted Han river. Where a Western film might separate two lovers, here we have a mobile-phone obsessed daughter, a loving but brain-damaged, childish and narcoleptic father, an uncle who is college-educated and unemployable, the wise but stubborn grandfather, and the aunt who is an international sportswoman.

It is here that the principle of Chekov's Gun applies: Nam-Joo (Doona Bae) appears on television in an early scene, juxtaposed with the scenes of monster rampage chaos outside the caravan. When she hesitates before firing her crossbow, earning a time penalty and losing out on the gold, you feel you know exactly how this film is going to end. Your prediction will be both right and wrong. Chekov's Gun is indeed fired; however the ending is neither a classic triumphant parade nor a classic horror-film twist in the tail - instead the film closes on an understated, melancholy note.

Doona Bae as Nam-Joo

I thought the cinematography was stunning, from the stark laboratory-set opening introducing the theme of chemical pollution, to the claustrophobic action in the sewers, to the final confrontation and scenes of chemical warfare there are too many memorable shots to count. The film also succeeds in making you love the cast of grief-stricken and unlikely heroes who try, fail and try again.

Drop the camera and run - the movie

Cloverfield is in many ways the opposite of Kate and Leopold - this film really should not work. It's a one trick gimmick - a monster movie but how original - it's all on a camcorder... By rights you should be bored after about eight minutes, even with the gene deficiency, and spend the rest of the movie shouting "drop the camera and run! drop the camera!"

This film worked for me for two reasons - firstly, it's only 90 minutes long (as it's supposedly recorded on an analogue camcorder cassette) but perfectly paced, and secondly, the director JJ Abrams is actually pretty good. It takes serious professionalism to simulate amateur filmmaking this way and still produce decent atmosphere and drama, and JJ's sense of timing is good enough to occasionally deliver actual shocks and thrills, something sadly rare in the horror genre.