More Sci-fi films like Alex Garland "Ex Machina" are needed. Not that they should be about the same thing, but there's something appealing about watching a small cast experiment with human experience variables in a strange futuristic setting. "Spiderhead," Joseph Kosinski follow-up to last month "Top Gun: Maverick," agrees with me, because it even has its mad scientist—played by a winking Chris Hemsworth—grooving to pop music. But "Spiderhead" individual significance is a larger issue, and it's ultimately not nearly as clever or eye-opening as it aspires to be.
Also Read: ‘Jurassic World Dominion’ Box office collection crossed 500M
"Spiderhead" envisions a different kind of prison system - with an open-door policy that allows inmates to have a sense of self, cook for themselves, work when they want to. What they sacrifice as punishment is their brain chemistry for science, which Steve Abnesty (Chris Hemsworth) follows the orders of a protocol committee with the hope of fixing the world problems through supplements messed up.
The prisoner has a free will to take an experimental dose – approved by what is called “acceptance” – and may face the self-loathing of “darkenflox” or the extreme need to laugh from “laphodil”. If Abnesty needs to clarify his thinking, he steps up the dose (via a smartphone app) on the "verbulous". These are weird names (from George Saunders' short story Escape From Spiderhead, a first-person account that thrives on casually throwing these words around), and it's certainly weird to see Hemsworth play this guy.
One positive side effect of "Spiderhead" is that the performances have their own potency, but only when given a specific dosage. Miles Teller and Jurnee Smollett, who play Jeff and Lizzie, respectively, give assured performances as the main prisoners. Because both are in prison for horrific acts of manslaughter, the prison has given them a chance at self-forgiveness. It's amusing, but also revealing, how the movie's dosage scenes, these simulations they bring to life by screaming, writhing on the couch, and occasionally feigning suicide, leave you cold. The literal act of Abnesti twisting them in different directions becomes almost a conceit of a film that is forcing its power, its hazy reason for being.
Based on a Saunders short story, but given a distinct stink by “Deadpool” screenwriters Rhett Rees and Paul Wernicke, “Spiderhead” strives for a restless quirk. Abnesty isn't your average evil genius, nor is Spiderhead your average atonement, and it's not your regular talkie sci-fi thriller. Even the opening and closing credits are dotted with pink chicken scratches, along with a supertramp song that kicks off a soundtrack that openly intersperses George Benson, Chuck Mangione, and Hall & Oates. Is.
But whatever “Spiderhead” is laughing at, or trying to sneak inside its drama, it just isn’t bright enough. The movie can be so laid back that even its lead may seem out of place—it's initially interesting to see Hemsworth play someone unarmed as manipulative, but he a man of science, power, control. becomes a heavy-handed expression of the film's limited statements about. He makes a strong case for being relegated to someone who doesn't hold back the "hot scientist wearing glasses" trope.
A lot of "Spiderhead" relies on the premise curiosity, which is teased by watching Hemsworth push Teller through various procedures, forming a friendship that this film treats as its low stakes. It's almost enough to make you forget that so little happens in the first 40 minutes that the experiments, which become increasingly manipulative, barely have a cumulative unsettling effect. It is clear how far a short story must have been stretched.
The concept of prison is as concrete as the structure that houses its titular penitentiary, but "Spiderhead" seems to say more with its premise than its execution. It's motivated by a desire to show how the American prison system could be more humane, but the plot larger revelations about what's really going on are as anti-surprise as you can get. The manipulation is worse than Jeff realises, and the plotting accentuates the film hollow nature with its convenient thrills (including a scene involving dropped keys to a secret drawer, and a shoulder-shrug of a grand finale). Even prison ethics are rendered ineffective. It doesn't want to upset anyone about the prison system, just as "Top Gun: Maverick" avoids discussing what really powers those jets.
Though it begins with promise, "Spiderhead" is pseudo-heady sci-fi nonsense that treats its most intriguing elements as an afterthought, and thus misses the opportunity to be a memorable oddity aside from its disappointments.