Vincenzo Natali
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The Platform (2019)
Directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
influenced by Cube (1998), Elevated (1996)
Themes Plot Visuals
It looks a lot like a more realism-drenched version of Vincenzo Natali’s claustrophobia-inflected 1997 feature Cube, with a similar sense that there are a lot of grand, echoing mysteries to explore.
Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s feature-length debut is a supremely confident genre mash-up that fuses the mysterious-prison conceit of Canadian classic Cube with the tongue-in-cheek social commentary of Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer before slathering it all with torn strips of flesh and buckets of blood.
There are ways of making this work, presumably; the film isn't so far removed from the cult classic Cube from 1997, which if anything makes even less sense as anything but an extended metaphor.
A pitch in search of a movie to ground it, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s The Platform never amounts to more than the sum of its parts, but fans of high-concept science fiction such as Cube and Snowpiercer may nevertheless appreciate the sheer number of those parts in a film that teems with ideas, but ultimately fails to commit to them.
However, if you’ve seen “Snowpiercer,” not to mention “Cube,” “Saw,” not much feels fresh in “The Platform,” its “bottle” concept not necessarily new cinematic DNA ditto its upstairs/downstairs socialist allegory.
Much like 1997’s Cube, his film never looks chintzy.
I’ve seen some folks say they get some Saw vibes from the film based on the initial marketing, but I found it more akin to the low-key love child of Cube and The Game .
The concept has been thoroughly explored in movies like Cube (1997) and the Saw franchise.
The film’s premise—six strangers are invited to participate in an escape-room challenge that turns out to have deadly stakes—is straight out of a Hollywood script lab, blending elements of other, more original movies (namely, 1997’s Cube and the Saw series) in hopes of making a quick buck off of name recognition.
Sort of a real world variation on Vincenzo Natali’s 1997 cult favorite Cube combined with the current escape room craze, the movie spends more time than expected fleshing out its characters while also still coming up with a variety of moderately inventive ways to kill off its cast one at a time.
Escape Room has obvious parallels to Cube (a group of people attempting to find their way out of a confined space) and the Saw pictures (an unseen puppet master forces individuals to play sick games in order to survive).
When first watching the trailer, it’s very easy to compare this film to the Saw franchise or the film Cube .
The director clearly knows his horror movies, too, because while “Splice” most closely resembles Shelley's classic novel, there are also hints of “The Fly,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” and yes, even “Species.”
Like the vastly superior The Fly , it uses gore sparingly; delivering shocks to the audience is a secondary consideration.
Throughout, parallels from James Whale’s 1931 film “Frankenstein” to David Cronenberg’s 1986 film “The Fly” to Roger Donaldson’s 1995 movie “Species” abound, but Natali goes a step farther in that he doesn’t make his leads at all likable, which might be an additional cautionary comment on all that occurs in his movie.
He throws in elements of David Cronenbergs The Fly, too, but ultimately Splice owes as much to David Lynchs parenthood-inspired Eraserhead as any other film.
Brody and Polley establish early on the feasible arrogance and naïveté of their hipster scientist couple, and itâs curious to see their relationship bow to this sudden onset of parental responsibilities â a little less Species or Cronenbergâs The Fly, and a little more Revolutionary Road, if you will.
He throws in elements of David Cronenbergs The Fly, too, but ultimately Splice owes as much to David Lynchs parenthood-inspired Eraserhead as any other film.
Aside from Species, its near-anagram antecedent, there's a touch of David Lynch in Dren's bawling-Eraserhead-baby phase, while the ambiguous glass-box corporate parks and squishy horror are very early Cronenberg.
Elsa inserts some of her own DNA into the hybrid animal/monster they've created--think "Eraserhead."
The uncanny strangeness of the infant Dren also strongly recalls the nightmarish ‘baby’ in David Lynch’s Eraserhead.
Similar in tone and themes to Vincent Natali’s Cube , it should prove attractive to distributors in the market for smart genre material: it has already been picked up by Altitude in the UK and Alba Films in France.
Of the claustrophobic thrillers inspired by the 1998 cult classic, “Cube,” “Meander” might just be the greatest and most realistic.
The imagery and setup for Meander invoke instant comparisons to Vincenzo Natali’s Cube .
But where Cube featured multiple participants within its sadistic games, Meander limits itself simply to the aforementioned woman, Lisa.
Fiendish in its simplicity, this breathtaking, harrowing French horror is the 21st century cinematic holy grail Cube fans have been searching for.
At least “Cube” was an allegory.
It is somewhat similar to Cube in concept but has more of an emphasis on exploring the ethical dilemma of a deadly survival situation.
This plot anticipates the many subsequent films ( Cube , Saw , and Circle ) in which characters wake up in a strange place, disoriented, and with no memory of how they got there.
In the spirit of Cube, but this time with (maybe?) aliens choosing the subjects instead of (maybe?) the government, Circle is a social/survival experiment where most choices lead to your immediate death and only the ruthless will survive.
Modestísimo film independiente, inspirado en cintas como 12 hombres sin piedad (1957) o Cube (1997), y con actores menos conocidos que el pin de la tarjeta bancaria de Amancio Ortega.
Haliyle filmin yıldızı da konusu... En büyük esin kaynağımız “12 Angry Men” demişler ve atmosfer için de “Cube” serisini dillendirmişler.
…memorable movies in the genre – good and bad – there are bits of Species, Alien, It’s Alive, Embryo…
The creature comes out looking like the chest-burster from “Alien,” but it quickly grows to become a delicate, female humanoid they call Dren (the word “nerd” in reverse).
That's the subject at the emotional core of Splice, an unsettling and skillfully mounted psychodrama that has some of the flavor of 1970s body-horror (mainly Alien and early David Cronenberg) mixed up with a contemporary retelling of the Frankenstein story.
Not only does the mixture take, the resulting embryo grows at an extremely accelerated rate and before long, it transforms into a creature resembling a cross between a jackrabbit and the thing that popped out of John Hurt in “Alien.”
There are clear echoes of "Alien" and early David Lynch imagery; and cinematographer Tetsuo Nagata (who also shot "Micmacs" and "La Vie en Rose") gives some of the scenes a sleek chill that recalls the David Cronenberg of "Videodrome" and "Crash."
Splice is at times genuinely frightening with early scenes evoking the unknown terror of Ridley Scott’s original Alien film.
Based on the ads, I assumed that it was going to be little more than a cheesy knock-off of “Species,” the endearingly silly 1995 monster movie best remembered for displaying the pulchritude of Natasha Henstridge and the scenery-chewing abilities of Ben Kingsley and Alfred Molina.
Variants of the story have turned up in a number of films over the last quarter-century such as The Fly (1986), Species (1995) and Alien Resurrection (1997).
Throughout, parallels from James Whale’s 1931 film “Frankenstein” to David Cronenberg’s 1986 film “The Fly” to Roger Donaldson’s 1995 movie “Species” abound, but Natali goes a step farther in that he doesn’t make his leads at all likable, which might be an additional cautionary comment on all that occurs in his movie.
But it's also uneven, perhaps a bit too preoccupied with paying homage to Shelley and James Whale's interpretations of the creating life story when not feeling a bit like the second coming of "Species" (the 1995 sci-fi flick), and ultimately succumbs to the tired third act conventions and requirements of the genre.
There are clear echoes of "Alien" and early David Lynch imagery; and cinematographer Tetsuo Nagata (who also shot "Micmacs" and "La Vie en Rose") gives some of the scenes a sleek chill that recalls the David Cronenberg of "Videodrome" and "Crash."
This breakthrough lands Clive and Elsa presumably writer-director Vincenzo Natali is deliberately referencing Elsa Lanchester and Colin Clive, co-stars of The Bride of Frankenstein on the cover of Wired magazine and earns them the gratitude of some nefarious pharmaceutical corporation with plans to harvest Fred and Ginger's "proteins."
Movie geeks will recognize that these hipsters (who dress like club bunnies rather than lab rats) are named after Colin Clive and Elsa Lanchester, the mad scientist and his creation in The Bride of Frankenstein.
Clive and Elsa are, of course, a reference to Colin Clive and Elsa Lanchester, who played Dr. Frankenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein in the 1935 masterpiece "The Bride Of Frankenstein," and that obvious joke is also a statement of mission: Natali knows exactly what story he's teling, and he wants to bring Mary Shelly's original concepts into the age where genetic miracles have become almost commonplace.
Adrien Brody - sorry, Oscar winner Adrien Brody - and Sarah Polley are punky biogeneticists Clive and Elsa (apparently named for Colin Clive and Elsa Lanchester , who played the mad scientist and his creation in 1935's "The Bride of Frankenstein").
Borrowing elements from Frankenstein, The Brood, The Fly and Rosemary's Baby, director and co-writer Vincenzo Natali nevertheless makes a film that's wholly his own despite its overall Cronenberg Lite vibe.
Quicker than she can say "Rosemary's baby," there's an embryo developing in the lab tank.
Part “Frankenstein,” part “Alien,” part “Rosemary’s Baby,” part cautionary tale to not mess with Mother Nature, “Splice” is an intriguing sci-fi flick that works most of the time until it reaches its telegraphed conclusion.
Part “Frankenstein,” part “Species,” and part “Rosemary’s Baby,” the impressive horror/sci-fi/thriller “Splice” stars Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley as arrogant genetic engineers who create a new lifeform in their laboratory and try to keep it secret.
All the cliches of such films - “Species,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Alien,” you name it - converge in the screenplay by a trio of writers including director Vincenzo Natali (“Cube”).
Morgan is the pistol whipping, flesh eating, test tube baby of this sloppy scientific experiment that combines elements from Vincenzo Natali’s Splice and last year’s Academy Award winning Ex Machina.
Vincenzo Natali’s 2010 film Splice tied similar elements together for greater tragic power.
In recent years especially, it feels like we’ve had a surplus of would-be Victor Frankensteins, from Oscar Isaac as the sweaty frat-bro version of a God Complex in Ex Machina to Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley’s noble effort to win the Worst Parents of the Year Award in Splice.
On paper, Morgan comes across as a cheaper version of 2009’s Splice.
Morgan also owes debts to last year’s Ex Machina and 2010’s Splice , among others.
Gimmicky but gripping, at least in its first half, this Spanish effort is a deathtrap thriller with maths puzzles, strongly reminiscent of Vincenzo Natali’s way-superior Cube or a special edition of The Crystal Maze.
(Vincenzo Natali's Cube also belongs in this group, and maybe even a few other movies that I can't think of right now.)
And like Cube , it's a trap.
There's one nifty sequence, inspired by the 1998 Canadian film ''Cube,'' in which two men get trapped in a corridor patrolled by a deadly geometric slice-and-dice laser.
I call this a cliché not because of its content (on the contrary; also, I hate Resident Evil even more now that I know that it's one halfway decent moment of gory terror was a rip-off), but because nothing here ever remotely informs the rest of the plot; it's just a way to quickly establish that the cube rooms are full of deadly evil, and also to provide an early boost of queasy-making violence in a film where hardly any actual gore shows up.
While some of the traps are frighteningly unpredictable and gruesomely satisfying—director Paul W. Anderson would blatantly rip off the film’s best death scene in 2002’s Resident Evil —the characters don’t amount to more than threadbare types.
But even that scene culminates in a slice-and-dice death that’s a direct rip-off of the superior Canadian sci-fi shocker Cube.
In the TV mini-series Frankenstein: The True Story (1973), writer Christopher Isherwood was one of the first authors to suggest that if a human scientist tried to create augmented life, the creature might turn out to be handsome rather than horrific - visually, if not morally.
From Shivers to The Fly to eXistenZ, the films of the Canadian auteur have explored ideas of science kick-starting evolution, sexual transgressions and bodily horror with a distinctive flair for visceral gore and pitch-black humour.
The films closest Cronenberg relative is probably The Brood (1979)for reasons that are as obvious as they are potentially misleading.
Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021)
Directed by Adam Robitel
influenced by Cube (1998)
Plot Themes
The film – it seemed to me – owed a lot to the 1997 cult smash Cube .
Escape Room was one-part Saw and one-part Cube, an innovative series of thrilling set-pieces that transcended its modest premise and January release date.
Something else worth mentioning is that, of course, it makes sense to discuss both the Cube or Saw series in relation to both Escape Room films, but what I thought was interesting is that because part of the focus in Tournament of Champions is the trauma that those who have survived Minos’ game must live with, there were aspects of the sequel that almost felt more in line with something you’d see in a Nightmare on Elm Street movie, simply because you never know if you can trust what you’re seeing unfolding in front of you.
Jeepers Creepers (2001)
Directed by Victor Salva
influenced Splice (2010), In the Tall Grass (2019)
Themes
The clinical twistedness of David Cronenberg and the ready chills of 2001's smashing creature-feature " Jeepers Creepers " converge in "Splice," a barrier-breaking mixture of sci-fi, horror and romantic drama that takes its inspirations seriously even as it goes off on its own wildly creative tangents.
Becky Demuth (Laysla De Oliveira) and her noxious older brother Cal (Avery Whitted) are speeding their way through some “Jeepers Creepers” territory when we first catch up with them.
(Think of how distinctive and involving the people, caught in a somewhat similar predicament, were in Robert Wise's "The Andromeda Strain" without being "movie stars.")