Vincenzo Natali is the Canadian cult director of Cube (1997), Cypher (2002), Nothing (2003), Splice (2009), Haunter (2013), and In the Tall Grass (2019). Also, he has been working in television, directing a few episodes of Hannibal, Westworld, American Gods, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, and 2022’s intellectual sci-fi The Peripheral.
Creating popular television series’ episodes or low-budget science fiction and horror films with high-concept ideas, Natali often questions what ‘human’ means, and explores our fears and the nature of evil. Let’s take a look at every film directed, written, and produced by Vincenzo Natali, ranked.
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8 388 Arletta Avenue (2011, producer)
Entertainment One
A grim horror-thriller that speaks to modern fears, 388 Arletta 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 Arletta Avenue scary and suspenseful.
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Natali served as executive producer of the frightening film. He opened up to ComingSoon about his experience, saying, “I don’t do much, this is really director Randall Cole’s movie and, in my own way, I’m there to help facilitate his vision… He wrote a great script. It’s conceptually pretty wild and very beautifully constructed”.
7 Come True (2018, producer)
IFC Midnight
In 2018, Natali produced Anthony Scott Burns’ science fiction horror Come True. This film centers on the teenage runaway Sarah (played by Julia Sarah Stone), who submits to a nightmarish sleep study and becomes an object of obsession for one of the scientists, Jeremy (Landon Liboiron). Come True is a slow-burn movie that sometimes resembles Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Satoshi Kon’s Paprika. It is atmospheric and surreal.
6 In the Tall Grass (2019, director/writer/producer)
Netflix
Based on a creepy novella by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill, Natali’s Netflix supernatural horror drama In the Tall Grass treats a Kansas field of tall grass as if it were a claustrophobic nightmare. The film follows siblings Becky and Cal (played by Laysla De Oliveira and Avery Whitted), who respond to the cries of a little lost boy and become trapped in the field where he got lost.
“I think really what it boils down to is presenting the grass as a character. It has agency and consciousness. You’re stepping into an environment that’s also a living thing”, Natali told The Verge.
5 Cypher (2002, director)
Miramax Films
A dark slice of corporate paranoia, 2002’s Cypher follows a humble accountant Morgan (Jeremy Northam), who suddenly accepts a job from a software giant Digicorp as a company spy. The film takes an unexpected turn when Morgan meets a mysterious femme fatale Rita (Lucy Liu), who reveals that he has been brainwashed and gives him The Matrix-style pills. Cypher is a brilliant sci-fi thriller that should be a must-watch on every Philip K. Dick, The Matrix, and Dark City lover’s movie list.
4 Haunter (2013, director/producer)
Wild Bunch
In this supernatural horror, Little Miss Sunshine’s star Abigail Breslin plays Lisa, a teenage girl who realizes that she is stuck in time, reliving with her family the same day, over and over. Soon it becomes clear that Haunter is a ghost story. But, like Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others and Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, the movie from Natali and screenwriter Brian King (who also wrote the script for Natali’s Cypher) centers on the haunter, not the haunted.
Natali opened up to Diabolique Magazine about the heart of Haunter, saying, “If I could use the word, I would almost call Haunter ‘fantasmagorical.’ It’s somewhat of a fantasy with darkness lurking around the edges. But in the film’s heart, Haunter is very sweet, which is new for me. That’s not really something I’ve done before”.
3 Nothing (2003, director/writer/producer)
Alliance Atlantis
Natali’s low-budget experimental comedy Nothing takes place in a blank white void and proves that nothing matters. A unique gem about two lifelong friends, Dave and Andrew (played by the director’s friends David Hewlett and Andrew Miller), who, after a terrible day, suddenly found themselves in nothing, this film gives you something you have never seen before. Thought-provoking, funny, and unforgettable, it is independent cinema at its best.
2 Splice (2009, director/writer)
Warner Bros. Pictures
Inspired by a real-life scientific experiment where scientists have grown a human ear on the back of a lab mouse (the Vacanti mouse), Natali offered up the bizarre and disturbing sci-fi tale about genetic engineering going horribly wrong. In Splice, a young scientific couple, Clive and Elsa (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley), decides to ‘grow’ a human-animal hybrid, Dren (played by French actress Delphine Chanéac).
“So it started with the mouse, and I came up with the notion of essentially telling a story where the scientists become more monstrous than the monster they create”, Natali told Student Filmmakers Magazine.
1 Cube (1997, director/writer)
Cineplex Odeon Films
Natali’s directing debut, 1997’s Cube, follows six total strangers who wake up inside a maze of interlocking cubes and need to find a way out of deadly traps. While many sci-fi films want to wow you with epic scope, Cube builds tension through the skillful use of narrative rhythm and makes you think. 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).
