Monster Week: Splicing Frankenstein

As my colleague Kyle M. commented earlier, real vampires—first and foremost—are monsters.
None of this glittery skin nonsense!
Look beyond to Dracula and other monsters in his pantheon. Wolfman. The creature from the Black Lagoon. The Mummy. Zombies. These are the quintessential founders of our current horror genre. No Team Edward. No Team Jacob. When one strips away the mainstream literary and Hollywood wussification of these creations, they are at their heart terrifying, not only for their outward evil but also for what they represent on a sub-textual level to our humanity.
While these monsters are visceral in a “I don’t want to get torn apart, ripped apart, bitten, drained of blood, or drowned” kind of way, the monster I like most is the one I did not mention.
Frankenstein.
I believe some monsters are more monster than others. Frankenstein is the epitome of everything I am truly scared of. Science gone wrong. In a world that grows to rely more and more on science, ethical issues grow in complexity and grayness.
Great monsters, to me, are like great science fiction stories:

They make you think beyond yourself and the ramifications of man’s actions on his world.

I think we will be thinking a lot while watching the forthcoming movie Splice.
And I can’t wait!

I’m more horrified by Frankenstein than the others, not because of his outward appearance or brute strength, but because of the questions that surround his creation and existence. Does he have a soul? If we make a soul from separate body parts, is that ethical? What soul exists then and where did it come from? What happens when we try to fool nature? What happens when we try to create life from parts?
While Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein raises these questions and many more—especially when one involves God in them—there is a new movie coming out that will once again tackle the fright of Frankenstein.
Splice.
I was meant to watch an early screening of Splice this morning. I couldn’t make the showing though since I was in Portland for a funeral. I will, however, be watching this movie because it seems the writer and director are tackling some of those scarier elements about science and its progress while updating it for our current times.
Here is the newest trailer for Splice:

What do you think? A great new monster? Maybe our first great female monster? Or will Splice go the way of that awful movie known as Species?
I guess we’ll find out!