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Spliced
DVD
**
Screen Media Films
Writing credits Ellen Cook Ron Silver .... Campbell Liane Balaban .... Mary Drew Lachey .... Brad Siri Baruc .... Debbie Billy Morton .... Earl Wendy Anderson .... Kelly Ryan Iain MacLean .... Jake Ryan Ariel Bastian .... Beth Ryan Jared Van Snellenberg .... Shane Underwood Andrea Runge .... Kara Genero Rob Van Meenan .... Jimmy Winters Melissa Repka .... Mandy Newbel Jody Peters .... Driver Levi James .... Ethan Camille Devine .... Ariel Yep, there's nothing more American than a girl's sweet sixteen. The family gathered around the cake, the radiant young girl cutting it, the little sister poking gentle fun at her, all of these things bulwarks of a young girl growing up in America. It's all fun and games until the cake starts bleeding! Seriously. She cuts two slices and the cake starts bleeding. Talk about your segueways! And it gets weirder from there--her father grabs a fistful and eats it, while screaming in this basso profundo voice, "What did you wish for, Mary?" So it's no real surprise when we find her sleepwalking in the streets. Of course, the constant sonambulism and nightmares does little for our die hard horror fan, Mary (take a look around her room--horror movies EVERYWHERE). She's constantly beleaguered at school, and is one of the lower ranks on the social pecking order. It should come as no surprise to anyone who's been in high school in the last five or ten years that the only guys seen in her company are slight, pale of complexion, and generally attacked themselves. Yet there's a beacon of light for Mary and her crew--the newest horror film, "The Wisher" has hit theatres, and most are interested. At least, those who follow that sort of thing. Now's where it gets bizarre. Spliced becomes a horror film within a horror film, showing actual footage of the film, "The Wisher". The characters love it, naturally...but the more I see it the more it's just some throwaway designed to advance a marginal plotline. It's actually self-deprecating; note the sexual nature of some of that footage. But on his way to recover Mary from the theatre, Mary's father runs into a bit of engine trouble...of the "we've replaced this man's automobile engine with a giant fireball, let's see if he notices" sort of way. Things go downhill from there for Mary, but a strange set of circumstances shows up. Seems like everything she wishes for, after she left the movie, is coming to pass. She wishes her father would "just leave." And he did, permanently. She idly wishes the wish of so many high school students, that she wouldn't have to go to school the next day. And then what? The school suffers a fatal accident of its own--a fire guts it in the overnight hours. |
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