Spiderhead — Movie Review
by KJ Proulx
Netflix hasn’t exactly had the best track record for feature films. Sure, there are numerous films in their catalogue that are up for many Oscars and some have even won, and deservedly so, but most of their movies are pretty lacklustre. It’s for this reason alone that I’m hesitant to watch any of them without hearing praise first. With that said, there are also films that I watch, simply due to whether or not the trailer hooked me, and that’s exactly the case with one of their latest releases, Spiderhead. The premise of this film alone was enough to warrant a watch from me, but sadly, that’s all this film has going for it. Here’s why I feel that Spiderhead is a film that squanders its potential.
Taking place in the future, Spiderhead is the name of a facility where convicts can have their sentences shortened, in favour of being experimented on with new, unapproved drugs. Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth) is at the head of this organization and is the one who administers everyone. The central focus of this film is on the character of Jeff (Miles Teller), who is being used as a lab rat for a new drug that controls how you feel about love itself, along with other emotions as well. This makes for some very solid scenes and Teller and Hemsworth deliver far better performances than this film deserves. The set-up hooked me in the trailer and also in the film, but it runs out of steam very fast.
It was at about the halfway point that I began to realize that the uniqueness had already peaked. There are so many things that can be done to make a film like this interesting, but it barely scratches the surface of any of them. For example, these inmates can be controlled basically whenever the company so chooses, as long as they give their consent. The problem is, that very select few people in this facility are even shown, and we see a very limited amount of the full potential of these drugs. I was waiting for a climax that would unravel everything and truly expose what something like this facility is capable of, but it never goes far enough. This entire film felt like a very long trailer for me. The character of Jeff is fleshed out enough, but I literally cared for none of the other characters.
Another reason I was excited to check this film out is that Joseph Kosinski directed it. Obviously his recent work on Top Gun: Maverick will be very hard to top any time soon, but I’ve also enjoyed every one of his previous films to varying degrees as well. I believe him to be a very, very solid director, especially when it comes to working with his performers and delivering on the action, but this film was a little more outside of his comfort zone and it just didn’t work for me. Still, his solid direction is still on display here, I just didn’t think he was the right fit for this film. Overall, the most frustrating thing about this film is that it probably had the most promise out of any of his work, which also makes it the most disappointing to me as well. I still look forward to anything he does in the future though. Even though it has a great idea and some great scenes, I can’t recommend Spiderhead.
Rating: 2.5/5
Check out the trailer below:
