Jeff (Miles Teller) is a young man with a reckless and tragic past that led to his conviction.  Offered a spot in an experimental drug test, he accepts, and in return is allowed to live with relative freedom across the facility.  The tests are led by Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth), a free-wheeling and eccentric scientist who seeks to push the limitations of the drugs being tested on the inmates in his care.  Jeff begins to fight back against his testing as he fears for the safety of not only himself but for his closest friend in the facility, too, Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett). 

Joseph Kosinski directs the Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick penned Spiderhead, based off of the short story Escape from Spiderhead by George Saunders which appeared in The New Yorker.  Published in December 2010, Spiderhead uses the text as a jumping-off point before taking the film in its own direction.  It maintains many of the same core elements regarding the MobiPaks, a device that attaches to the lower back and can inject the subject with various chemicals that will adjust their mood and demeanor.   

Released by Netflix, the 106-minute film mixes the heavy themes of medical dependency and inmate welfare with a soundtrack pulling from some of the greatest hits of yacht rock.  The disparity between the glossy presentation and the deeply tragic themes works a little against the film, especially as it doubles down on its campy nature in the latter half of the narrative.  Further, it makes it almost impossible to discern when this film takes place as it overlaps these 70s and 80s hits with flashbacks of classic cars, open drinking, and a notable lack of technology with scenes at the facility where the MobiPaks are controlled by smart devices.  This creative choice was employed more than likely to disarm the audience in a similar way to Jeff and the other inmates, but in practice, it became more distracting than anything else. 

The two leads, Hemsworth and Teller, spend much of the film in a battle of wits against each other.  Abnesti has his experiments to run while Jeff begins to grow more and more suspicious of his actual motives.  It is an interesting setup rife for exploration, the experiment that rebels against its maker, but employed here it stumbles and never quite reaches that explosive finale that makes this brand of underdog tales so engaging and cathartic.  Hemsworth plays the role of quirky techbro, and archetype that is quickly becoming a parody of itself, in a surprisingly refreshing way.  The actor leans into the campy nature of the film, almost winkingly, instead of playing Abnesti as a collection of tropes and ticks that act as a shorthand by the writers insinuating that the character is potentially on the spectrum.  This stereotyping is cropping up more and more, two prime examples being Campbell Scott’s Lewis Dodgson in Jurassic World: Dominion (2022) and in Netflix’s own Don’t Look Up (2021) with Mark Rylance’s Peter Isherwell.  Wherever the performance notes came from, be it Hemsworth’s own doing or guidance from Kosinski, it was a welcome change of pace to a role that could be easily played as a damaging example of representation. 

For all the life Hemsworth brings to the film and his character, the same cannot be said about Teller’s Jeff who is dully written and thus, dully performed.  It remains to be seen for Teller if his breakout role in Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash (2014) was just lightning in a bottle, or if he has just had terrible luck being cast against far more charismatic stars as seen in another Kosinski-helmed film, Top Gun: Maverick (2022), which finds Teller fizzling out against the star power of Tom Cruise.  Whatever the reason, in Spiderhead, Teller does not seem to be fighting for presence in the scene and even when the tides begin to shift in Jeff’s favor, Teller maintains the same apathetic stare and cadence throughout.  Even Smollett, whose Lizzy is written as a vague notion of a love interest until it is time to pull out a tragic backstory, manages to take what little scraps of character Reese and Wernick offer her and pull focus towards her late in the third act of the film. 

It is the third act of the film where Spiderhead really begins to fall apart.  The title of the short story promises an escape, and while the first two acts establish a very interesting concept, the eventual escape provides very little excitement.  In an effort to wrap things up quickly, the film provides the characters with far too many conveniences paving their way to freedom.  The defense here is that Spiderhead is not trying to be a prison break thriller, but the argument is that there is little to no challenge for our characters to face during the climax.  Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2014) follows a similar arc of an experiment gone wrong necessitating a third act escape for the cast, but in that example there is a sense of clear and present danger throughout that does not exist in Spiderhead.  

Despite the weak ending, Spiderhead still makes for some easy viewing and though it is not easily categorized as a feel-good film, it just scratches at the surface of its themes meaning a hyper commitment to every single detail is not needed here.  Hemsworth makes for a good tour guide through this experiment and the film has little downtime making there very little opportunity to reach for your phone.  The film showcases an interesting premise with some glimmers of brilliance throughout, but overall, the final effort is lacking that spark to put the film on the path towards becoming a cult classic.  Instead, it finds itself squarely in the muck of direct-to-streaming mediocrity.