We are talking about the 2008 horror film Splinter,’ which won six honors at the Screamfest Horror Film Festival. The film was nominated for Best Horror Film at the 35th Annual Saturn Awards, in addition to earning awards for Best Score, Best Special Effects, Best Editing, Best Make-up, and Best Directing. It was unfortunately defeated by Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Hellboy II: The Golden Army.’ You will be even more astonished to learn that, despite being nominated for the Most Memorable Mutilation at Spike TV’s 2009 Scream Awards for the arm removal sequence, Splinter lost to David Hackl’s Saw V’s Pendulum Trap.
Toby Wilkins directed the film, which was shot over the course of twenty days and stars Shea Whigham, Paulo Costanzo, and Jill Wagner in the key characters. Despite having a limited theatrical release, the film is a jewel of a film, with a terrifying concept and flawless execution!
In today’s video, we will not only discuss the film but also go over the extraterrestrial parasitic fungus in great detail. Are you all set?
The Movie Plot
A pump attendant at a sleepy gas station gets attacked by some splinter-infected animal. Soon, his body starts contorting. The scene then shifts to a young couple, Seth Belzer and Polly Watt, who have plans of camping in the forests of Oklahoma as part of their romantic getaway. However, their plans get completely crushed when they are carjacked by fugitive Dennis Farell and his drug-addict girlfriend Lacey Belisle. The group faces a flat tire when they run over a splinter-infected animal on the road. While changing tires, Dennis gets a splinter on his finger from the tire. The knocked-down animal starts twitching unnaturally and the group drives away to find shelter at the same but now deserted gas station, where the movie began.
Dennis gets Polly inside the store to pick up some supplies and by then the former’s finger has started getting all gross. Lacey, on her way to the washroom, opens the door to find the pump attendant from the first scene dreadfully infected and writhing inside. She does warn the others but gets attacked and killed by the creature in the process. The remaining race back inside the store and lock themselves. The creature lays to rest on the hood of the hot car and in spite of being dead, Lacey starts twitching. Dennis goes out to check on her but Lacey’s reanimated corpse attacks him and he crawls back inside. The zombified Lacey starts violently banging her head against the window. The group tries escaping from the back door but fails to do so. It is while fighting her that the trio realizes that even the detached pieces of the infected victims are capable of assaulting on their own.
Sheriff Terri Frankel arrives at the scene in hopes of arresting Dennis and to ‘save the day but gets torn in half by the reanimated corpse of Lacey, much to the trio’s horror. The creature conjoins the officer’s upper body with itself and becomes a much larger beast. With a part of the creature’s arm chasing after the trio, they manage to hide in the freezer. In the meantime, Dennis’s infection has become worse and his left arm begins to twist, contort, break, and pop violently on its own. He informs the duo about being pricked by a splinter from the animal that they had run over earlier.
They end up amputating his arm to stop the infection from spreading further. Seth discovers that the creatures themselves are actually some kind of a fungus or mold; ones who are controlling the corpses that they infect, devouring their blood, and using the existing zombified host to look for new hosts. It’s because of this that they hunt their prey based on the temperature, attacking the next warmest thing that they can find.
Seth is able to get to the police car by lowering his body temperature below normal with bags of ice. The plan is to take control of the cop car radio and get help. Polly and Dennis start lighting firecrackers at the backdoor to distract the creature. While Seth does make it to the car, his plan fails when he discovers that he needs the key to turn the car on and power the radio. It is useless otherwise. The creature makes its way to Seth when the latter’s body temperature begins rising and this leads Dennis to go outside and distract the beast.
It follows him back to the store and starts ravaging the shop. Dennis and Polly are forced to hide in the freezer again. The lighter fluid ignites and the gas station catches on fire. Seth, who has managed to retrieve a shotgun from the police car helps Polly and Dennis escape. Dennis volunteers to keep the creature away and it goes without saying that he gets infected. While he manages to shoot one of the diesel tanks with the shotgun, the creature gets overwhelmed in flames and eventually dies. But sadly for Dennis, he is still infected. He gives away a key to a bank account to Seth and Polly, telling them to give it to the wife of a man he had shot earlier. Post this, he shoots straight at the propane tanks and dies a martyr.
The movie ends with a visual of various other infected corpses lying dormant in the forest.
Boasting a run time of 82 minutes, ‘Splinter’ begins on a premise that has been done many times before. Nevertheless, this flick here deserves a special mention for being able to craft and execute it so well. The plot is pretty basic, we have a monster, a desolate place, and a bunch of people trying their very best to survive in this situation. Mind you, the production value looks great; the creature is bound to haunt you in your nightmares and the movie boasts a well-rounded, likable and most importantly believable cast. To those who are yet to watch the flick, it is highly entertaining and quite refreshing if we may add so, right from the start till the end credits roll. Also, it would not be completely wrong to say that the concept of the creature seems to be inspired by John Carpenter’s 1982 sci-fi horror classic, ‘The Thing’. But then again, it is up to you to see and decide that!
Extraterrestrial Parasitic Fungus Explored
Where can one even begin while talking about this parasitic alien? One who has a particular penchant for jabbing itself into both animals as well as humans. And if only it would stop at that, which we all know isn’t the case. Post the jab, not only does it kill its victims but also ends up reanimating their corpses as zombies and taking full control of them. Say hello to the main antagonist of the movie known as the ‘Splinter Fungus’!
Just picture this – the creature is so tough that it is easily capable of puncturing even the undercarriage of a car. This clearly means that it isn’t some ordinary being. As deduced by the character of Seth in the movie, the creature is actually some kind of a fungus that takes control of the body, infects and consumes the blood present in the body. In other words, it digests whatever it touches.
Next, it uses the zombified host to seek out new subjects to infect and devour. The creature hunts on the basis of temperature, attacking whatever is the warmest, which in simpler words means blood and life. With this newfound knowledge, the remaining survivors are able to make out that keeping themselves cold or cooler than the ambient temperature will basically make them invisible. That is why Seth is seen lowering his body temperature by using ice from the gas station, and no wonder he is able to sneak past the monster to get to the police car. But here is the eerie part; the detached portions of the infected people or animals for that matter an attack on their own and don’t even require a body to do so.
So, what exactly is this thing besides being the primary villain of the movie? For all we know, it is a parasitic being that jabs itself into living things, primarily humans. It resembles a sea urchin with black spiky protrusions or says thin black quills. But what it is known for is possessing the body of organisms after they are dead or killed. Here’s some interesting trivia that might intrigue you. It is reported that the Splinter Fungus in the movie is partially based on the Cordyceps fungus, that infects ants and cicadas, turning them into zombified puppets or let’s say fungal zombies for that matter.
A much clearer example of this would be the 2017 Australian post-apocalyptic horror drama flick, ‘Cargo’. Anyway, coming back to the creature on display here, it has the ability to sense body heat very well and primarily hunts based on this. It goes without saying that it can effortlessly cut through things with its spiky protrusions. In fact, they are so hard that it can cut straight through metal as well. Surprisingly, it has the ability to join parts of organisms together; let’s say multiple hosts for that matter, to make a larger mass. It can also shoot quills to infect new hosts and it moves very fast, especially when it takes on a body.
Of course, the Splinter has weaknesses too. The main one is that it can only sense heat. This means that it has a very limited level of intelligence and can be avoided by simply staying inside someplace that is cold, or say keeping one’s body colder than the ambient temperature. Well, if you can do that the way Seth did, you are basically invisible to them. It can’t see you and thus it won’t track you. In short, it would not really care. The creature is also quite attracted to heat, so much so that it will literally go to the extent of actually throwing itself into a fire. Mind you, without a host body it is extremely weak and slow. Also, if you are wondering what will happen if it can no longer use a host body or it does not have one, well, it will lie, keep a low profile and wait for another host to come along and touch it.
One thing that’s for sure is that getting infected with this thing is always lethal. You will die and that’s affirmative. Of course, there are exceptions and by that, we are stressing on the amputation before the infection spreads. Having said that, if it infects certain areas like your stomach, neck, or even head for that matter, you cannot really do much about it. You are pretty much dead. Organisms that have been integrated into the core mass of the Splinter, or have needle-like hyphae emerging from their bodies, are basically considered dead.
The Splinter is always on the lookout for accessible biomass. But to look for new sources or ways to spread itself in the movie, it is observed searching for and chasing after warm bodies and warm things. It attacks its prey by effectively impaling them. Even one single splinter is quite capable of causing widespread infection if it is left unattended. The end result would be a lumbering mass of dead meat, probably from different bodies impaled on the splinters in such a way that it can be used by the Splinter Fungus organism to move around and find its next prey.
So Where Did The Splinter Come From?
Maybe if we figured out where it came from, we could understand more about this organism. Based on the movie, we don’t really know for sure because it is not explicitly mentioned, until recently, when we were made to believe that this thing simply started emerging. It takes over very fast; it’s very easy to infect hosts be it far or near. It also makes the infected host bodies very aggressive and seeks out more prey to digest whatever it touches.
The Splinter organism bears resemblance to Ophiocordyceps unilateralism, which is an insect pathogenic fungus or a parasitic fungus that kills or severely disables insects. Currently, this cordyceps is mostly found in tropical forest ecosystems. It infects ants of the Campotini tribe and the entire pathogenesis is defined by changes in the infected ant’s behavioral patterns. These infected ants will leave their canopy nests and stop hunting for food, to get closer to the forest floor where the temperature and humidity are ideal for fungal growth. Next, they attach themselves to a large vein on the underside of a leaf using their mandibles, where the host will stay until it dies and even afterward. This process takes at least four to ten days and includes a reproductive stage in which the fruiting bodies grow from the ant’s head and bursts out to release the fungus spores –precisely how cordyceps reproduce.
However, on the basis of how the film is made, if you pay attention to the introduction part especially when the opening credits are still rolling, you will see a sign that says Keep Out Mid-State Oil, Inc. Experimental Extraction Field Site. Well, generally when people put up hoardings like that in a movie, it is a given that this foreshadows something bad that is about to happen. Why else would the sign be focussed on for a good few seconds unless it had something to do with the movie. And now we all know what happened next!
Are They Extra-terrestrial?
There is a high possibility that something might have landed on Earth that brought them here, but honestly, even though this fungus is highly aggressive and complex, it would not take years of evolution for it to evolve into something like this. Well, for it to become this aggressive, there would have to be some kind of a catalyst to make it advance this way. After all, we do have something similar to this, called the rabies virus. And, while it is true that it does not use zombified animals, it does specifically change an animal’s behavior to make them both confused and aggressive enough to want to go out and bite another living thing, despite the danger to themselves. Therefore, it is not too far-fetched to think that the Splinter creature is something from this very planet, more like unearthed from a cave or disturbed from its initial underground habitat.
We don’t know a lot about it, but this thing is way more complex in terms of how it functions. That does not necessarily mean that its origin is from outer space. But at the same time, it is also not that far-fetched to believe that it might be from outer space, because an alien planet to us is the same as our planet to an alien. If a planet can support complex life, the organisms are bound to attain similar body plans to fulfill a niche, as creatures do here on Earth. With the splinter being so hostile, wherever it came from had to have been hostile enough for it to evolve in this actively intimidating way. Chances are, there wasn’t a lot of fire or interaction with fire from where it came from.
It evolved to track warm-bodied prey but initially, the splinter would just lie, waiting for something to come into contact with it. So, it is possible that they grew on some sort of a plant or whatever that planet’s version of a plant would have been, waiting for a small animal to come and investigate it while trying to feed. And, post this, it would get a splinter on its body and the fungus would utilize the animal’s body to get more prey – that’s if it’s from outer space!
Why Would They Put Pieces Of Organisms Together?
Besides the shock value of body horror in this movie, what could possibly be a growing benefit? It is probable that the Splinter organism is just utilizing whatever is available. Maybe, the creatures on its world if it indeed came from outer space were smaller. And for them to take on bigger creatures, especially ones that would help them breed more, they had to also have the right amount of mass to take them down. Even though technically, if larger creatures were to just get pricked by one splinter, the job would be done and they’d still get infected. But it is a given that you can infect something much faster if you have a larger mass and more surface area to put your spikes and splinters in. The Splinter organism utilizes parts of its victim’s bodies, to help with mobility and capture more prey.
The more moving parts or pieces, the more they are likely to get the better of their prey and catch more. The Splinter creature is able to jump over the roof effortlessly in the movie, whereas its dead host would not have been able to do such antics when it was alive. This gives us a hint that the creature probably climbed and jumped very high or lived in all sorts of terrain. At all costs, the Splinter must get to its prey no matter where it is. The creepiest part about this creature is the fact that it can go on and on, chasing the target without ever getting tired in the first place!