Splinter

The Body Horror genre has long been a niche with one dominating force: David Cronenberg. He firmly established himself as the figurehead of body horror with such films as Rabid, The Fly, and Videodrome. The reason that Cronenberg's films work so masterfully in this genre is due to the focus on the paristitic infection, the invading alien element, as the main antagonist in the film. The fear that is brought about when someone is transformed against their will into something inhuman, when someone is violated (and definitely with sexual metaphors in many of Cronenberg's films) and their body is taken over. Cronenberg's success in this genre has, in a large way, laid the framework for how a successful body horror film must be written.

Splinter is a film about a group of four people that end up being trapped in a gas station in the middle of nowhere. The attacking force originally appears to be a reanimated corpse of a gas station attendant, covered from head to toe in strange splinters. The splinters reveal their true nature early on in the film, as a parisitic force that takes control of its infected host.

The “splinter” effects in the film, or when a character in the film is taken over by the parasite, are done remarkably well for the budget. The antagonists, the infected "splinter" bodies, move with a series of jerky, primal movements, captured with quick handheld shots. We don't see much of the monster, but we see enough that it works well as an agent of fear. This is a notable but common tactic that has worked well in other successful horror films, most notably Alien (I should mention that Alien is one of the few non-Cronenberg films that is championed in the Body Horror genre). When we don't see the monster in it's entirety, our imagination tends to fill in the rest of the horrific details. The shots in the film are done in an extremely shallow depth of field, and this adds to the claustrophobic feel as the characters are trapped in a 20ft square room for most of the film.

This film fails on two fronts. When a script limits itself to a handful of characters for the majority of the film, the film is shouldered upon these few characters. They have to be strong in order to bear this burden. This comes in the form of strong acting, strong dialogue, and strong character development. If this doesn’t happen, it definitely gets noticed. In Splinter, we meet a cast of stereotypes and hypocrisies. The initial ineptness of the city-folk couple is expected, but they seem to grow a surprisingly large pair by the end of the film. And the convict who hides a heart of gold? Strangely enough, the couple he kidnapped must have realized that fact before the audience, because they seemed quite willing to save his life immediately after having a gun pointed at their face.

Like the fates of most horror films, this one rises and falls on the success of the monster. As I mentioned earlier, the fear in Body Horror films is on the infection; the invasion of the body by a mysterious and deadly force. This film barely touches the surface of what could have been explored on this subject. One character finds themselves “splintered,” and this fact seems to stay quiet for most of the film. The director chooses, instead, to have the fear be directed outwardly towards an antagonist keeping the group trapped inside the gas station. The problem, in this case, is that the director isn’t presenting the horror for what it is: a parasitic infection. If you keep the infection at bay for the entire film, and you don’t present it as an invading force within the protagonists, then you’re ignoring the fear that a body horror film can bring to the audience. Had the director explored this more, Splinter could have been much more successful. This isn’t a bad film, but an enjoyable scary flick that reminds you of what it could have been.