Nothing wrong with a nifty horror show that evokes the early David Cronenberg of The Brood. Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley play Clive and Elsa, genetics researchers with an itch to move on from experimenting with animals and start incorporating human DNA – a major scientific and moral no-no that lures an audience to demand a yes-yes.

Elsa is the Eve who tempts loverboy Clive to take a bite out of her apple. That would be a human-animal embryo with a sting in her tail and a mind of her own. Elsa names her Dren ("nerd" in reverse), and then the creature starts developing fast. Clive and Elsa try to hide their splice from the world.

Brody and Polley perform way beyond the call of sci-fi duty, creating complex characters that draw us in. But they can't compete with Dren. Played as a child by Abigail Chu and as an adult by Delphine Chanéac, Dren morphs into a special-effects miracle, sexy and scary in equal doses. Before the film devolves into cliché, director and co-writer Vincenzo Natali creates a potent and provocative thriller about gender politics and human impulses that can't be reduced to a science.

“Youth Knows No Pain”

“Like on 'Youth Knows No Pain' — we are the ones that should demonstrate, because we can take it,” Likke Li said. “We can pierce ourselves, take Ecstasy, dance all night and still go to work at our McDonald's jobs.” Despite the hedonistic sentiment in the song, the Swedish singer also admitted in hindsight her youth had repercussions. “I remember when I was 18-19 and feeling that I know it all,” Li said. “I always feel that I know it all. But that song is about realizing you don’t, and reflecting, ‘Boy, if I only knew what would follow.’”