As writer-director Vincenzo Natali's "Splice" generates strong buzz for its daring depiction of synthetic life, Guillermo del Toro is voicing his admiration for the film.

The movie follows two young scientists who splice together human and animal DNA to create a new organism. Despite the potential ethical and legal ramifications, they shepherd the development of a female creature, and form a bond with it that eventually turns deadly.

According to del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth"), who produced 'Splice," most movies in the genre shy from treading in the concepts explored by Natali.

"It's not very often that a major release also gets to tamper with the moral borders that we dare not to cross," del Toro said in an interview with SCI FI Wire. "There is always a line in the whole structure of the creator/monster myth. There's a line that never gets crossed, from the earliest myth of Frankenstein, for the Golem, there is always a familial relationship. There can be father and son or neglected son and father. There's always family dynamics at the center. With 'Splice,' Vincenzo has made a really sick family dynamic within the characters of the piece that is 'Splice.' If they do want to see a couple of those lines crossed, fully crossed by the filmmakers, they should go see 'Splice.'"

Natali ("Cube") embraces the fact that his twisted tale is disturbing some audiences at screenings.

"If I haven't done that, I haven't done my job," he said in an interview with Shock Till You Drop. "That's what this movie sets out to do. It takes people to places they might not be comfortable with, but for me as a filmmaker, I think it's kind of thrilling. That's what horror films should do. The strength of horror as a genre is that it allows us to traverse into places that are frightening, that we are not comfortable visiting in our every day life. But let's do lurk. This is an oedipal horror movie that taps into things that have been discussed for thousands of years.

"One of the things that excited me about making 'Splice' are those notions of animal-human hybrids and now we have the technical tools to make them a reality. The movie plugs into highly-charged things that are current."

"Splice" hits theaters Friday, and stars Adrien Brody ("King Kong," "The Pianist"), Sarah Polley ("Dawn of the Dead") and Delphine Chaneac. It's based on a script by Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor.