Splice

Saw Splice, a sci-fi horror which is sort of light on horror but long on creature-effects.  It's a Frankenstein-like story about two rockstar geneticists who splice human and animal DNA to create some kind of fast-growing mutant which seems to be female, which seems roughly humanoid, albeit with double-joined legs, and whose blood is a cocktail of beneficial enzymes and chemicals.

The film was made the mid 2000s and although it was apparently inspired much earlier by the photograph of a mouse with an ear on its back, it feels inextricably linked with the start of the internet land rush and the dot-com boom.  The scientists especially reinforce this for me.  They talk about breaking the rules and pushing the envelope.  They get sweetheart deals from accented investors and drift into their lab at noon, listening to heavy metal and wearing hoodies.  Their homes are decorated with anime stills, band posters, and Munny dolls.  They feel like the arrogant techs turned capitalists who are on to something big.  Of course, rather than making mincemeat of our notions of privacy and information, they are hard at work on genetics and notions of humanity.

So, apart from silicon valley, the other inspiration here is Frankenstein - we have a creation, created in hasty exuberance, getting out of control of the creators.  In this case, the creators are a boyfriend-girlfriend pair of scientists, making the connection to parenthood inescapable.  Indeed, parenthood is brought up explicitly in the film, and that's clearly it's overriding theme.

The film gets quickly Cronenbergian once the creature shows up.  There's the self-destructive obsession and body-horror that he returns to over and over, and icky sexual bits.  The film is a lot of chilly fun.  It's most interesting of course just seeing what new mutation the creature reveals, or what new extreme the couple is pushed to, as they try to protect and contain their awful spawn.  The film is fairly dark and ultimately fairly nihilistic-capitalist, once the money-men get involved.  There's many interesting notions to think about but the film is well made enough that you don't really think about these until it's all over.  A good, gripping, interesting film.