Once I made the right decision when I rented "Cypher" only by relying on a line on the cover of the DVD that said "from the director of CUBE". Coming home I immediately checked how much the movie got from IMDb users and was happy that it had received a rating of 7.4. Apparently I had a sleeper in my hands. After having watched it I must say that 7.4 is a bit too much (especially since the brilliant "Cube" only got 7.3 stars), but "Cypher" is indeed an interesting movie. The most intriguing thing about it is the direction. Vincenzo Natali combines almost stage like scenes, that rely only on the actors, with special effect scenes featuring high speed helicopters and rocket-like elevators. The movie is very slow paced in the first 45 minutes, a little too slow maybe. Natali uses mostly gray colors at the beginning to show how boring Morgan Sullivan's life is, which I found a little too obvious. There's nothing subtle about it. I like the way Natali concentrated on his actors in the first act, though. I hadn't heard of Jeremy Northam before but I was impressed by his performance. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more of him. The story itself is good, but if you try you can figure it out about halfway through. That's not the point, though. As somebody else already pointed out in the comment section, Natali's main focus is not the "why" but the "how". "Cypher" follows the tradition of classic sci-fi movies like "eXistenZ" or "Total Recall". Natali has yet to find his very own style but if he keeps producing kafkaesque gems like "Cypher" and "Cube" he'll be the next David Cronenberg soon.
Review of Cypher
