Sarah Polley returns to acting in the horror thriller Splice.

PARK CITY, Utah — It took the “crazy, insane, shocking” horror thriller Splice to lure Sarah Polley back in front of the camera.

“Generally my focus is writing and directing more than acting. But I absolutely loved the script and I decided to go back to acting for a little while, just to try it out again,” she told us prior to the movie’s world premiere at this January’s Sundance film festival.

Splice wound up playing so well that it was snapped up by Warner Bros., which is confidently giving it a wide June 4 release.

In the cautionary tale from Toronto’s Vincenzo Natali (Cube), Polley and Adrien Brody star as renegade geneticists who create a beautiful but frightening new life form when they marry human and animal DNA.

“It was an incredible character,” Polley said.

“A character like this doesn’t get written for women very often. She’s incredibly ambitious, wilful, and pretty messed-up … She had such amazing elements in her. I thought the script was so shocking and so pushed the envelope and so went into territory that could either work beautifully or fail miserably, I just thought I want to be part of the process.”

The results are “very disturbing. I also felt when I read the script, that every time you think there’s some subtext of what could happen but would never happen because it’s a movie — it actually ends up happening. We’ll offend some people, but it’s a pretty brave film.”

Polley’s next project is decidedly tamer: She’s directing the romantic drama Take This Waltz with Seth Rogen and Michelle Williams.

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