Doc Rotten's Movie Monsters of 2010: Dren in Splice

For each weekday throughout December, Doc Rotten will be looking back at 2010 examining 20 Movie Monsters of the year. Check back each day and rate how successful the monster worked on the big screen, DVD or BluRay. On December 31, we'll look at all 20 Monsters in order of their popularity. Let's take a look at today's Movie Monster of 2010.

In the science gone mad film Splice, geneticists Clive Nicola (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarrah Polley) manufacture a creature spliced together from the DNA of a variety of different animals and beasts, including human DNA from Elsa. Hiding the resulting creature from the rest of their research team, they raise the female beast who grows to an adult at an increase rate. Giving her the name Dren, Clive and Elsa discover she is omnivorous and amphibious and has a tail with a stinger full of lethal poison. Later, she is revealed to have wings and a growing affection for Clive. Toward the end, she unveils a surprising evolution that threatens Elsa, spells doom for Clive and sets the events up for a sequel. The film opened to generally positive reviews but still only made $25 million on a $30 million budget. The creature is well designed and marvelously executed. Actress Delphine Chanéac brings a broad spectrum of emotion to Dren, rounding out one of more unique and challenging creature brought to the screen this year.