Vincenzo Natali is the cult Canadian director of cube (1997), Zero (2002), Nothing (2003), Splice (2009), haunting (2013), and In the tall grass (2019). In addition, he has worked in television, directing a few episodes of Hannibal, Westworld, american gods, Cabinet of curiosities by Guillermo del Toroand the intellectual science fiction of 2022 The ringroad.
Creating episodes of popular TV series or low-budget sci-fi and horror films with high conceptual ideas, Natali often questions what “human” means and explores our fears and the nature of evil. Let’s take a look at every movie directed, written and produced by Vincenzo Natali, ranked.
8/8 388 Arletta Avenue (2011, producer)
A dark horror thriller that speaks to modern fears, 388 Arlette Avenue follows James Deakin (Nick Stahl) and his wife Amy (Mia Kirshner), who are unknowingly stalked 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s the unknown and the realistic game of cat and mouse that makes 388 Arlette Avenue frightening and suspenseful.
Natali served as executive producer on the scary film. He opened up to ComingSoon about his experience, saying: “I don’t do much, it’s really director Randall Cole’s movie and in my own way I’m here to help facilitate his vision…He has writes a great screenplay. It’s conceptually quite wild and very nicely constructed.”
7/8 Come True (2018, producer)
In 2018, Natali produced Anthony Scott Burns’ sci-fi horror To come true. This film centers on teenage runaway Sarah (played by Julia Sarah Stone), who undergoes a nightmarish sleep study and becomes an object of obsession for one of the scientists, Jeremy (Landon Liboiron). To come true is a slow-burning film that sometimes resembles that of Michel Gondry Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and that of Satoshi Kon Paprika. It’s atmospheric and surreal.
6/8 In the Tall Grass (2019, director/screenwriter/producer)
Based on a chilling short story from Stephen King and his son Joe Hill, Natali’s Netflix supernatural horror drama In the tall grass treats a field of tall grass in Kansas like it’s a claustrophobic nightmare. The film follows brothers Becky and Cal (played by Laysla De Oliveira and Avery Whitted), who respond to the cries of a lost little boy and find themselves trapped in the field where he got lost.
“I really think it comes down to presenting the weed as a character. It has agency and awareness. You enter an environment that is also a living thing,” Natali told The Verge.
5/8 Cypher (2002, director)
A dark slice of corporate paranoia, 2002s Zero follows a lowly accountant Morgan (Jeremy Northam), who suddenly takes a job with software giant Digicorp as a corporate spy. The film takes an unexpected turn when Morgan meets a mysterious femme fatale Rita (Lucy Liu), who reveals he’s been brainwashed and gives him The matrix-style pills. Zero is a brilliant sci-fi thriller that should be a staple of every Philip K. Dick, The matrixand dark city list of love movies.
4/8 Haunter (2013, director/producer)
In this supernatural horror, Little Miss SunThe Abigail Breslin star plays Lisa, a teenager who realizes she’s stuck in time, reliving the same day with her family over and over again. Soon it becomes clear that haunting is a ghost story. But, like Alejandro Amenábar Others and Tim Burton beetle juicethe film by Natali and screenwriter Brian King (who also wrote the screenplay for Natali’s Zero) focuses on the haunting, not the haunted.
Natali confided in Diabolique Magazine on the heart of hauntingsaying, “If I could use the word, I would almost call Haunter ‘spooky’. It’s a bit of a fantasy with darkness lurking around the edges. But at the heart of the film, haunting is very soft, which is new to me. It’s not really something I’ve done before.”
3/8 Nothing (2003, director/writer/producer)
Natali’s low-budget experimental comedy Nothing takes place in a white and white void and proves that nothing matters. A unique gem about two lifelong friends, Dave and Andrew (played by director’s friends David Hewlett and Andrew Miller), who, after a terrible day, suddenly find themselves in nothingness, this film gives you something you never thought you would. ‘ve never seen before. Thought-provoking, funny and unforgettable, this is independent cinema at its best.
2/8 Splice (2009, director/writer)
Inspired by a real-life science experiment where scientists grew a human ear on the back of a lab mouse (the Vacanti Mouse), Natali came up with the bizarre and disturbing sci-fi tale about genetic engineering gone horribly wrong. . In Splicea young couple of scientists, Clive and Elsa (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley), decide to “grow” a human-animal hybrid, Dren (played by French actress Delphine Chanéac).
“So it all started with the mouse, and I came up with the idea of basically telling a story where scientists become more monstrous than the monster they create,” Natali told Student Filmmakers Magazine.
1/8 Cube (1997, director/screenwriter)
Natali’s directorial debut, 1997 cube, follows six complete strangers who wake up in a maze of interlocking cubes and must find a way out of deadly traps. While many sci-fi movies want to wow you with epic scope, cube creates tension through the skillful use of narrative rhythm and keeps you thinking. Produced on a budget of just $365,000, Cube managed to create a cult following and spawned a sequel (Andrzej Sekuła’s Cube 2: Hypercube), a prequel (Ernie Barbarash’s Cube Zero), and a Japanese remake (Yasuhiko Shimizu’s cube).
