Spiderhead (2022) is Netflix's latest high-concept Sci-fi offering in the acts of Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller, Jurnee Smollett, and Mark Paguio. The film is based on George Saunders' Escape from Spiderhead, which is a short story published in The New Yorker in 2010. It was also directed by Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion, Top Gun: Maverick) and written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the minds behind Deadpool (2016), and Zombieland (2009). With this tremendous cast and crew, Netflix's budget, and a plot reminiscent of Black Mirror, needless to say, people were excited. However, given the exciting premise, I felt that the movie could've done much more and been much more thrilling.
Spiderhead is a Netflix original that was just released on June 11th. The film takes us through the journey of a prisoner inside Spiderhead, a state-of-the-art penitentiary. However, this isn't just any prison, this place boasts itself as being a research facility for human emotions, using the prisoners as lab rats. Chris Hemsworth stars as Steve Abnesti, the pharmacologist behind it all. He injects prisoners with serums designed to make you sad, angry, in love, and more. Miles Teller plays Jeff, the man who wants to learn what's really happening to him. This dystopian/lab research style isn't the first of its kind, but it's a concept that people often find very engaging... and initially, it was.
The movie throws you directly into it and begins experimenting on the protagonist. If you've watched many movies, especially dystopian ones, the plot and setup are pretty standard. By now, we're used to the genre, it's not new like Brave New World or 1984, so to be a great film, it really depends on the characters. And that, one of the most (if not the most) important aspects of the film is where this movie falls flat.
The main point about each character is their past. Jeff killed his friends while driving drunk, Lizzy accidentally killed her baby, and Steve was abandoned as a child. Although, Lizzy and Steve's backstories are told through about one line and Jeff's is through flashbacks, that doesn't tell me nearly enough about how close everyone was. Aside from their past, the film is emotionless for much of the time as the prisoners need to be controlled in order to research emotions one at a time. Sadly, this results in a pretty boring time. That's not to say that Jeff and Lizzy's characters are uninteresting, but it's kind of an issue when your snarky, sly villain is hogging the limelight. (I mean, it's Chris Hemsworth, so it's expected of a big star.)
