Vincenzo Natali’s Splice combines the DNA of several of film’s best science-fiction stories – Frankenstein, Jurassic Park, E.T. – with the destructive family dynamics of a staged melodrama. Our two scientists, Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) create a new life form by combining human DNA with that of various animals. But, rather than wanting to play God to the creature – a bald-headed nymph named Dren – Clive and Elsa would rather play Mom and Dad. Which is when things get weird.

What we get is a fresh take on a dry subject: the ethical boundaries of human genetic engineering. Splice begins with our pair of scientists, who are also romantically involved, continuing experiments on Ginger and Fred, two immense slugs grown in the laboratory whose genetic secrets are to be harvested for pharmaceuticals. But the scientists, Clive and Elsa, want to go further. Slugs are great, but imagine what could be learned from creating humanoid creatures. Every known disease could be cured. But, as a corporation funds the research, a corporation whose goal is profit and not knowledge, the two scientists are denied the right to experiment. This prohibition is, of course, ignored.

Illegally, Clive and Elsa incubate a fiercely-evolving creature that, from its moment of birth, seems too fast, too smart, and too uncontrollable. It starts as a pale rodent-like creature, looking like a cross between a tiny T-rex, a rabbit, and a hairless mole. Elsa quickly grows attached (she really needs to mother something), and won’t let Clive kill it. And so it grows. Quickly. Soon it becomes as mature as a toddler, clicking and twittering in a cricket’s language, hopping about the lab in a pink dress, and learning to read, spelling out words in Scrabble tiles. Elsa no longer thinks of it as an experiment, not even a pet, but begins to treat the creature like her own daughter. She names it Dren.

And Dren quickly grows up. The film switches locations, and tone, and moves to the abandoned farm where Elsa was abused as a child by her mother. Dren now looks like a teenage version of … whatever it is that Dren is, complete with a teenager’s rebellious – and hormones. Needless to say, Elsa and Clive’s happy little family doesn’t last for long.

Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody both fill out their roles of nerdy scientists until their characters stretch at the seams, but the true star of the film is Dren. This monster is perhaps most creepy as a child, when played by Abigail Chu, even if it becomes most dangerous as a young adult (Delphine Chanéac). The integration of Dren’s motion capture, make-up, and CG is seamless. She is completely believable, unlike the very computerized slugs Ginger and Fred.

The cinematography is crisp and accomplished throughout, Natali dressing each location in its own specific light. Viewers who pay close attention will notice several in-jokes within the background of sets, references to classic cinema and sci-fi. Even the soundtrack has a melancholy allusion to Gennadi Rezhdestvensky’s Gayanne Ballet Suite, best known for its use in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The story both suffers and succeeds from its dramatic shifts in tone. It begins as a science fiction story, changes in its middle to a type of Lovecraftian family melodrama. The climax seems blunt and pedestrian, and the final scene is completely implausible, existing only to set up a sequel.

But for the most part, Splice works. Its shifts in tone may keep Splice from true greatness, but they succeed in keeping the story suspenseful. Splice is an ambitious, stylish revamp of the Frankenstein myth, asking viewers to share in the wonders and delight of its scientific discoveries – and the horror of that discovery gone astray. Flawed, but easily one of the best science fiction films you’ll see this year.