Spiderhead, a new Netflix original thriller, has just about everything in the world going for it. Director Joseph Kosinski is still flying high on the success of Top Gun: Maverick, which recently became the biggest movie of the year at the box office. Screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick are the devilishly witty minds behind the Deadpool franchise. Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller, and Jurnee Smollett make up a trio of well-loved stars that could anchor any movie with ease. Spiderhead should be a layup for Netflix. Instead, it just feels frustratingly average.
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Based on the Escape from Spiderhead short story by George Saunders, Spiderhead is set in an experimental prison where an eccentric warden/scientist (Hemsworth) uses the inmates as test subjects for potentially life-altering new drugs. These subjects are driven to love, pain, and absolute madness, all in the name of trying to better the world around them. Jeff (Teller), is one such inmate, dealing with the regrets of his past and a potential love for fellow inmate Lizzy (Smollett). Of course, nothing about Spiderhead’s facility is quite as it seems.
Kosinski makes Spiderhead look as interesting as possible, considering it largely takes place in one location and it was filmed during pandemic lockdowns. Kosinski has always been impressive visually, and the way he shoots around the tight corners and intimate spaces of Spiderhead can be unsettling, as is the intention. But one can only make concrete feel interesting for so long.
Like the concrete walls of the facility, Spiderhead is often too straightforward for its own good. Saunders’ original story aims to bend reality and how we think about the concepts of love, control, grief, and power. This adaptation wants to do those things but often stops short of actually exploring them. It never wants to push the envelope too far and that’s really a shame.
The film is also severely hindered by the fact that it has too much time on its hands. 106 minutes isn’t exactly long for a feature film, but even that is too long for a short story like this one. Instead of new nuggets of information or provoking trains of thought, the nooks and crannies of Spiderhead just give the film too much time to be literal or over-explain. A series like Twilight Zone or Black Mirror would’ve provided a much better platform to adapt Saunders’ story, and it likely would’ve been given a lot more freedom to be as weird as it needed to be.
Spiderhead may not be a movie to call home about, but there are too many talented people involved for it to be really bad. A lot of the drug scenes are incredible in a vacuum, immaculately and expertly performed. Both Teller and Smollett bring their A-game. No one in this production, however, was quite as dialed-in as Chris Hemsworth.
Steve Abnesti, on the surface, is unlike any character Hemsworth has ever played. The man is a serious sociopath with a horrible God complex who could win endless awards for gaslighting if such a thing existed. He also happens to be deeply funny in the darkest ways, and he can become your worst nightmare with the flip of a switch. Hemsworth is one of the last people you’d expect to see in a role like this, and that’s what makes it so fascinating and relentlessly entertaining. He’s believable around every turn and draws laughs from you when they’re the very last thing you want to give him.
Spiderhead is absolutely the best work of Chris Hemsworth’s career, and that’s saying a lot for folks who have seen Bad Times at the El Royale or Ghostbusters: Answer the Call. It’s just a shame that performance comes in such an average, forgettable film.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Spiderhead debuts on Netflix on June 17th.
