Vincenzo Natali is the director of the feature dramas Cypher, Nothing and the international sci-fi hit Cube.

I feel sorry for any generation that grew up without exploding heads.

In 1981, at the age of 12, I was enraptured by the sensational ad campaign for Scanners: ’10 Seconds: The Pain Begins. 15 Seconds: You Can’t Breathe. 20 Seconds: You Explode.’ Although I was too young to see the movie, it sounded incredibly cool, and when I later learned that the sick individual who made it hailed from my hometown of Toronto, I was even more curious.

To my surprise, I discovered that this man, David Cronenberg, was not an exploitation filmmaker like so many of his tax-shelter peers. In fact, as interviews made it clear and as his subsequent work would demonstrate, he was an artist in possession of an amazing intellect. Cronenberg was inventing a new kind of horror film, one that was completely devoid of the gothic trappings that defined the genre. His films were clinical, existential and biological… in a word, modern.

From the new wave techno ethos of Videodrome to the genetic meddlings of The Fly to the psycho-sexual perversions of Dead Ringers, no other filmmaker so consistently and effectively tapped into the fears and fascinations of the end of the last century. He continues to be a pioneer, probing psychological and physiological inner space with films such as Crash, eXistenZ and Spider. His explorations have, in turn, provided a jumping-off point for a new wave of filmmakers, among them: Chris Nolan (Memento, Batman Begins), Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream), Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy), the Wachowski Brothers (the Matrix trilogy) and many others, myself included.

The effect of growing up with his movies was mind-blowing – not in the destructive Scanners way – but in the metaphorical sense. It is very difficult to make a science fiction or horror film without directly or indirectly referencing those early films. Ironically, Cronenberg was not influenced by other directors. His roots were literary, lying somewhere between William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick and Vladimir Nabokov. And yet, like the fly in the teleporter, an alien component crept into the mix and begat something unique to both media… something distinctly ‘Cronenbergian.’

I will always be grateful to be among the first generation to witness this startling mutation. And I continue to watch eagerly for his next incarnation.