#MovieReview: Spiderhead falls off the tightrope it is trying to walk

Spiderhead has lofty ambitions and decent performances, but ends up feeling like a poorly executed Black Mirror episode.

The most recent Netflix original release brings Top Gun: Maverick star Miles Teller and director Joseph Kosinski back together, but fails to recapture that magic.

The film is adapted from a George Saunders short story, Escape from Spiderhead, which originally appeared in the New Yorker magazine.

Saunders’ writing is difficult to adapt in any context, but an example that walks such a tight line was always going to be a tough proposition.

Blending themes of Big Pharma, the penal system and near-future designer drugs, all of the bare bones were there for a high concept sci-fi thriller.

Instead, we get an insular character study which tries to seamlessly genre-hop, but ends up as a mish-mash of under-baked ideas.

Mild spoilers to follow

Spiderhead follows prisoners who have elected to live in a facility where they are treated better than in typical prison but have to undergo frequent tests.

They are looked after by ‘warden’ Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth) who does not lock any of the interior doors of the facility and lets prisoners roam freely – even allowing them access to him.

All he asks in return is to lend him equally free use of their bodies to be used as lab rats for some shadowy science products.

Seems like a fair trade-off? Well, naturally something more sinister is at play.

Though some of the concoctions give the prisoners Utopian highs, others are designed to plumb the depths of the human condition.

These are all administered in an equally cheery manner by Abnesti, who it seems is hiding something dark beneath his smiling exterior.

Hemsworth is good for the most part, showing his excellent comic timing that has been used to great effect in the recent Thor films and the all-female Ghostbusters reboot.

He contrasts this with a fervently meticulous villainy which he seems over-the-moon to be playing.

This multi-faceted and tonally shifting character is something that has been oft used by the screenwriters, who also wrote the similarly irreverent Deadpool movies.

But try as it may to be a genre bender, Spiderhead becomes a Jack of all trades, dipping its toe into too many different movies to deliver anything great.

It’s technically well made and mostly well acted, but the plot is held together by telekinetic masking tape – think too hard and it will fall apart.

Rated 18 for Violence, Language and Sexual Content.
2/5.

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