Spiderhead

The writers of Spiderhead discuss the new Netflix movie's long road to the screen, working with Chris Hemsworth, and more.

“It was a short story that had appeared in The New Yorker that they wanted to exploit as a feature film,” explains Reese. “And we fell in love with it. “Chris is brilliant in the movie,” says Paul Wernick about the MCU star, whose Thor: Love and Thunder arrives next month. But in any case, we wrote it on spec and then ultimately sold it to Netflix. Once Joe was attached, and we started to get a path toward a cast, that’s when Netflix finally bought the script.” Controlling those experiments as Steve Abnesti (renamed slightly from the story) is Chris Hemsworth, who brings an unsettlingly superficial good cheer, a suffocating self-regard, and the threat of a monstrous ego at work to the role. There he becomes one of the subjects of a scientist named Ray Abnesti, who has developed a series of drugs that can control the emotions and behavior of whoever has the drugs in their system. “This was about a 10-year process,” Reese tells Den of Geek on a Zoom chat witth Wernick by his side.

Based on a short story in The New Yorker by George Saunders, the new film stars Chris Hemsworth as a prison warden testing behavior-altering drugs on ...

Saunders, who began writing for the magazine in 1992, was named a National Book Award finalist for “ Tenth of December,” the short-story collection in which “Escape from Spiderhead” was later published. “More and more these days,” Saunders told Deborah Treisman, The New Yorker’s fiction editor, when “Escape from Spiderhead” was first published, “what I find myself doing in my stories is making a representation of goodness and a representation of evil and then having those two run at each other full-speed. Shot in the country’s northeast during the pandemic, the film co-stars Miles Teller, who is currently appearing in theatres in “Top Gun: Maverick,” as the prisoner who narrates Saunders’s story, and Jurnee Smollett, an Emmy nominee for “Lovecraft Country,” in a role that has been added for the film.

What they sacrifice as punishment is their brain chemistry for science, which is toyed with by Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth), following the orders of a ...

A lot of “Spiderhead” relies on the curiosity of its premise, which is teased by watching Hemsworth push Teller through different procedures, creating a friendship that this movie treats as its light stakes. The movie can be so backwards that even its lead can seems out of place—it’s initially interesting to see Hemsworth play someone as disarming as he is manipulative, but he becomes a heavy-handed expression of the movie’s limited statements about science, power, control. It’s motivated to depict how the American prison system could be more humane, but then the plot's larger reveals about what's really going on are as close to an anti-surprise as you can get. The literal act of Abnesti turning them different ways becomes almost a conceit of a movie that itself is forcing its power, its vague reason to exist. “Spiderhead” imagines a different kind of prison system—one with an open-door policy that allows the incarcerated to have their sense of self, to cook for themselves, to work out when they want to. “Spiderhead,” the latest film from Joseph Kosinski after last month’s “ Top Gun: Maverick,” agrees with me, because with its many similarities it even has its mad scientist—played by a winking Chris Hemsworth—grooving to pop music.

Chris Hemsworth's latest Netflix movie is a '70s throwback with very 21st century flaws.

While it’s understandable that Netflix would want a genuine A-lister to headline a high-profile film like Spiderhead, however, this is not a role suited to a star who – in a previous life – would have been described as a matinee idol. Netflix should be applauded for continuing to make the sort of mid-level movies that no longer make it into theaters – and Spiderhead undeniably has a decent stab at capturing the minimalist paranoia of a ’70s thriller. It’s as if Netflix’s algorithms told them audiences would be reluctant log on to a prison drama that didn’t also have laughs, and nobody knew when to stop. This device – clearly designed to look like medical equipment Nintendo would make if it gets bored of videogames – is capable of delivering carefully monitored doses, rigorously controlled by a bespoke smartphone app. New Netflix movie Spiderhead has similar aspirations, but it’s a little too quirky and self-aware to truly keep you on the edge of your seat. In many ways it’s a throwback, a reminder of what sci-fi movies looked like before Star Wars turned effects-laden blockbusters into the gold standard.

Viewers have lavished praise on Chris Hemworth for his performance in the Netflix sci-fi thriller Spiderhead. Adapted from a short story by George Saunders, ...

It starred Hemsworth’s wife, Elsa Pataky, and featured a shock cameo from the Thor star himself. Miles Teller is great but Chris Hemsworth’s mad scientist persona steals the show.” “ Chris Hemsworth really gets to flex his acting muscles, he’s amazing!

"Spiderhead" was made for promos -- Chris Hemsworth! Miles Teller! The director of "Top Gun: Maverick!" The writers of "Deadpool!

Still, it's more of a gift to the Netflix marketing department than it is to viewers who brave its web. Because this is one of those movies that's forgotten almost as soon as it ends, and it doesn't even require any chemical intervention in order to erase the memory. Meanwhile, a more conventional bond begins to form between two of the inmates, Jeff (Teller), who seems to be one of Steve's favorite subjects; and Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett), who like Jeff is nursing scars from the outside world.

Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth) has his very own experiment set up on Spiderhead, an island that takes prisoners from incarceration and sets them up as test ...

He goes from fear, to laughter, and finally to serenity as the Luvactin kicks in and he sees a surreal glow in the distance. Lizzy and Jeff are still feeling the after-effects of their experiments as they speed away from Spiderhead on a boat. Throughout the movie, Ray was hunting for ‘Shit-Finger’, a mystery prisoner who was smearing faeces on the walls of the complex. Instead of intentionally crashing his plane to avoid the consequences, it appears to be a result of a faulty MobiPak, which is pumping all manner of drugs into his system. Jeff clearly feels guilt for the accident that caused Emma’s death, and his updates on her answering machine is certainly a way of communicating that. He heads to his plane and, as he ascends, his MobiPak goes haywire, giving him a cocktail of all the drugs he’s used in his experiments. Throughout the movie, we see flashbacks of the event that caused Jeff to get locked up. He eventually gets Jeff to make a decision by lying to him and telling the prisoner that the board have told him to press on with the experiment. Jeff has called in the police and manages to save Lizzy and escape the island by boat. It’s explained that Steve has been using it throughout the movie as a means to test how far the subjects would really go against the people they love. The Luvactin overpowers him, and he mistakes a rockface for a beautiful ray of sunlight, crashing his plane. Jeff grows closer to another prisoner, Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett), and the two fall in love.

The new movie "Spiderhead," starring Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller, distorts a great George Saunders story into an empty good-versus-evil tale.

A couple of new, auxiliary drugs feel true to the story, and the original bits of the score are effective. “Escape From Spiderhead” builds on motifs he developed in other stories, like corporate involvement in law enforcement (“My Flamboyant Grandson”) and medicated captive research subjects (“Jon”). Some of his protagonists must respond to methodical violence by joining in or paying a price (“Ghoul,” “ Elliott Spencer”). By personalizing the story’s threat in Abnesti, the writers remove the existential dilemma on which Saunders hung his plot. “Escape From Spiderhead” is one of Saunders’ most horrific tales, but its run-of-the-mill bureaucracy invites reader identification. But Kosinski leans heavily on a handful of glam, New Wave and soft-rock songs to signify — what, exactly? On the other, they have unsupervised access to knives (never mind belts, glass vessels, underwire bras, etc.; this Spiderhead is crawling with contraband). In another sense though, the prison-industrial complex is a constant human experiment: How young can we lock people up? One can only dream of what a surrealist like David Lynch or Josephine Decker would have done with the scenes. Yet in “Spiderhead,” the adaptation by Joseph Kosinski (“ Top Gun: Maverick”) that opens this week, Saunders’ work is little more than a prop. George Saunders’ “ Escape From Spiderhead” is the stuff of nightmares, or at least of mine: torture, mind control, lifelong regret. Despite a charade of consent, subjects are aware that if they refuse to cooperate, the experimenters can fax Albany for permission to use an obedience drug. Sparing Jeff the tough choices, the writers shunt moral transformation onto a minor character. The film’s writers, Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese (“Deadpool”), fundamentally misconstrue Saunders’ story.

New psychological thriller Spiderhead features tons of great music, including a fantastic score composed by Joseph Trapanese.

- “Crazy Love” by Poco Were you trying to figure out which songs were playing throughout Spiderhead? Some song titles are actually shown on-screen because Steve plays them from his phone, but others might be harder to place. The creative team managed to feature some truly iconic songs in this film, including music from Hall & Oates and The Doobie Brothers!

Chris Hemsworth ponders musingly, or muses ponderously, in the foreground of a barren concrete Image: Netflix. Happy Friday, Polygon readers! This week brings a ...

It is now available for rent at a reduced price of $5.99. In this one, the Crawley family travels to France after a mysterious inheritance. This South African crime thriller comes from French director Fabien Martorell, who previously worked on documentaries and short films. Unlike the 1950 version with Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, and Elizabeth Taylor, or the 1991 movie with Steve Martin, Diane Keaton, and Kimberly Williams, the new adaptation focuses on a Cuban American family. Nearly 30 years in the making, VFX artist-director Phil Tippett’s Mad God is a nightmarish odyssey through a dystopian world of Boschian grotesqueries and phantasmagorical landscapes. She brings across her character’s conflicted state in captivating ways, with an alluring effervescence and genuine personality. The third film in what’s been described as director Joachim Trier’s “Oslo trilogy,” The Worst Person in the World is a romantic black comedy centered on Julie (Renate Reinsve), a medical student stumbling through an underwhelming love life and a troubled career path. Morbius is what happens when there’s a studio desire for another Venom, but without much thought as to how Venom connected with anyone. Audiences do turn out for characters they love, but they also show up for characters played by people, by actors who give them weird quirks and specific mannerisms. And now you can rent it at the reduced price of $5.99. “Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski and the writers of Deadpool team up to adapt a dystopian short story by George Saunders” is a real description of a real movie that really exists. This time out, he’s working with Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller, and the writing team behind the Deadpool movies and 6 Underground on a cerebral sci-fi.

Netflix's newest arrival, Spiderhead, is a film packed with music but which songs feature in the soundtrack and who composed the score?

- Der Fruhling (Spring)by The Swingle Singers - Solfeggiettoby The Swingle Singers - The Logical Songby Supertramp

The Doobie Brothers, Roxy Music, and other artists appear on the soundtrack to the new Netflix film Spiderhead. Listen to the OST here.

Spiderhead is streaming now on Netflix. Directed by Joseph Kosinski ( Top Gun: Maverick, Tron: Legacy), Spiderhead is based on George Saunders’ short story Escape from Spiderhead, originally published in The New Yorker in 2010. Sci-fi thriller Spiderhead hits Netflix on June 17th, and with the Chris Hemsworth– and Miles Teller-starring film comes a yacht rock-inspired soundtrack.

This article contains Spiderhead spoilers. It looks almost blissful. That serene sunset Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth) imagines he's flying toward might as ...

So being asked to let Jeff go free and destroy his life’s work is a bridge too far, and one that gives Steve the free will to fight back. At the end of the movie, Jeff commands Steve to open the doors to Spiderhead and help him destroy the scientist’s life’s work. The short and obvious answer is that Jeff appealed to Mark’s sympathies. It is Jeff’s self-loathing guilt, his new pampered lifestyle, and the B-6 that all influence his decisions. Once perfected, Steve intended to sell it to businesses (and governments?) under the name O-B-D-X (Obediex). What sort of authority wouldn’t want something that “could get you to follow an order antithetical to your deepest values and emotions?” So Steve would try to pump Jeff up with “love” for Heather (Tess Haubrich) via N-40, but the experiment wasn’t to prove that it would make folks become infatuated with one another—even to the point of ripping their clothes off right in front of voyeurs! However, Jeff still was consenting to things he might not have otherwise—like eventually giving Heather the Darkenfluxx. Was he broken down by Steve’s pressure?

Chris Hemsworth stars in Netflix's Spiderhead, a sci-fi movie that is chillingly not as far-fetched as we'd like to think.

Spiderhead offers a world that looks welcoming and secure; but the beauty outside is nothing but pretty packaging around a rotten core. It’s one of those movies that creeps up and jabs viewers between the shoulder blades with an ice pick. Kosinski took the not-so-deranged premise in Saunders’s story and turned its dark themes into a twisted cautionary tale. People will justify some seriously messed up stuff in the name of "the greater good." With a single word, Spiderhead calls into question both the meaning of consent and free will. By the midway point if you haven’t realized Abnesi is the focus of the movie, you might be convinced neither the writers nor director understood George Saunders’s short story ( Escape from Spiderhead (opens in new tab)). But you’d be wrong. Thankfully, the third act is about discovery not resolution and Hemsworth’s delightful sociopath doesn’t disappoint. This only works because Hemsworth fully commits, giving off the energy of a cult leader. Overseeing it all is a charismatic Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth). The convivial warden intent on running a respectful prison. They funnel the film’s philosophy through one-liners and innocuous banter. Just that fast, director Joseph Kosinski ( Top Gun: Maverick) sets the stage for what’s to come, inferring nothing’s what it seems in the near-future. It looks like an inviting island paradise, with communal spaces, comfortable rooms and a well-stocked kitchen, but it’s a lie.

Miles Teller and Chris Hemsworth go head-to-head in a prison that tests mind-altering drugs in the new 'Spiderhead' sci-fi movie streaming on Netflix.

Spiderhead keeps the acid tone of the story (though sadly missing a lot of the bizarre flowery language), as its characters are subjected to more and more manipulative treatments. The creepy premise is adapted (by Deadpool guys Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick) from George Saunders' story "Escape from Spiderhead," which was first published in The New Yorker in 2010, and, if you've never read him before, is a perfect introduction to Saunders' ability to weave together the funny and the macabre. The facility is built on a remote tropical island apart from civilization, but things seem to be happening in the world outside that are connected to the drugs. Jeff and his fellow inmates have been fitted with "MobiPaks," mechanical cartridges attached at the base of their spines that hold vials of different types of liquid, within which are prototypes of mind-control drugs with marketable nicknames like "Verbaluce" and "Laffodil." Daily, Jeff visits an observation room run by Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth), the guy in charge of the facility who carries out various experiments on the somewhat willing participants, testing the efficacy of the company's new drugs. Jeff (Miles Teller) lives in the Spiderhead, a high-tech private prison facility housing a group of convicts who have volunteered to participate in an experimental program rather than wait out their sentences in a state-run prison. Whether they're set in the far future, a few weeks from now, or an alternate version of the past, even the weirdest and darkest science fiction stories are mirrors to our own present.

George Saunders's dark, challenging sci-fi story has its edges sanded off in the streamer's new Chris Hemsworth-starring adaptation.

Netflix’s recent drop in subscribers had led to reports of a strategic rethink – including a decrease in the volume of mid-budget film releases in favour of higher-budget tentpole movies. Lizzy (a creation of the film, played by Jurnee Smollett) is another. Jeff (Miles Teller) is one of the prisoner-subjects. The film – about a prisoner undergoing futuristic drug trials – is a mid-budget, adult-oriented sci-fi, the sort that’s becoming a dying breed in traditional movie studios. This covered everything from strikingly original animations (BoJack Horseman; The Midnight Gospel) to revivals of cancelled TV gems (Arrested Development; Black Mirror) to reality shows with premises that frankly defy belief (Floor Is Lava; Is it Cake?). A $200m, three-and-a-half hour Scorsese movie that de-ages its cast by half a century? The streaming company has always worn the “disruptor” moniker as a badge of honour, like a brash schoolchild flicking the “V” at a crusty old headteacher.

A dark fable about corporate obedience gets Miles Teller and Chris Hemsworth—and loses its teeth.

(In the movie, Abnesti has been trying and failing to devise a drug to render people docile—which is just a bit of flattery for all the average folks out there who are convinced they’d have been conscientious objectors in the Milgram Obedience Experiment. Milgram didn’t even need drugs to prove otherwise!) Jeff decides that the only way out is to commit suicide by ODing on Darkenfloxx himself. In an absurd rush at the end to reassure the audience that everyone will be fine, the movie delivers the breathless news that both Jeff and Lizzy have already served their time, even as Abnesti’s disillusioned assistant arrives at the lab with the police—not a positive development in any Saunders short story I can imagine, but treated here like the advent of the cavalry. The movie turns Abnesti into a rogue scientist, an individual whose schemes can be thwarted by exposure, but the Abnesti of the short story is just a middle man, part of a system that can’t be overthrown because it’s everywhere. After he refuses to consent to the experiment, Abnesti steps out to get a vial of another drug that will render him compliant. “Even if I didn’t like the person very much, even if I hated the person, I still wouldn’t want to do it.” It’s easier, after all, to suffer for the people we love than for the sake of flawed strangers. (In the movie, he drives drunk and slams into a tree, killing two passengers, including his own wife.) “I don’t even know why I did it,” he admits. Now they—the unseen board whom Abnesti says he takes his orders from—want to administer the drug to one of the women while Jeff describes his response under the tongue-loosening influence of Verbaluce. In the film, the lab is a brutalist concrete outpost on an unspoiled island. “I just didn’t want to do that to anyone,” he realizes. As with all dosings in Spiderhead, the inmates must verbally consent to the proceedings by saying “Acknowledge.” When Jeff shows no preference for saving either woman, the experiment is deemed a success and neither gets Darkenfloxx. But later, Abnesti calls Jeff in to explain that these results aren’t good enough. They can also make people fall briefly but madly in love with whoever happens to be in the room. But entertainment conventions demand that our heroes rebel, fight back, and then light out for the territories, as if injustice can be eluded with a change of scenery.

This review of the Netflix film Spiderhead does not contain spoilers. I've never really put any stock into how much it costs to make a movie. All I care.

Still, the third act’s problems overshadow big ideas, and a performance by Hemsworth is too much to ignore. Yes, the film was an entertaining ride for most of its run. The big twist that Spiderhead is working towards is explained by a bingo card that is ridiculously eye-rolling. They want to see which one he would give a painful mental drug called Darkenfloxx that will send one of them down a rabbit hole of mental health that one may not recover. Except, I wouldn’t call the script convoluted; for every big swing that connects, there is one that misses badly. All I care about is if I enjoyed the film experience or not.

Spiderhead director Joseph Kosinski and producer Eric Newman address the truth behind their new Netflix thriller.

To do it in an American accent, to be so charming and funny and entertaining, but also have the starkness and just the complexity of this almost sociopathic character to me was such a fun thing to see on set every single day and I’m really, really excited for people to see it.” “I don’t think there’s anything in this film that isn’t in the not-so-distant future for us. While the film does have a futuristic feel to it with the minimalist facility and technology used to administer the drugs, both insist that the events of Spiderhead are closer to reality than you might think.

How does the new Netflix movie starring Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller stack up next to the story it's based on?

Abnesti, meanwhile, gets to his private plane and takes off, but still overwhelmed by the different emotions and sensations in his system, crashes into the side of a mountain. Jeff manages to get to Lizzy in time and pull the Darkenfloxx out of her MobiPak before it’s fully delivered. In both the story and the movie, Abnesti uses Luvactin to make Jeff have sex and fall in love, one after the other, with two different women. We don’t see much of him in the short story, but in the movie he’s played by Mark Paguio and he’s treated by Abnesti almost as a butler and bit of a punching bag, instead of an equal and fellow scientist. In the movie at least, he’s also an addict: He’s got a MobiPak attached to his lower back and pumps himself with some of his formulas. Thematically, that really locked in the movie for us in terms of creating a love story between Jeff and Lizzy, two people who fall in love in the most inhospitable of climates for love: prison walls.” Abnesti controls the MobiPaks through a remote-control device, which is visualized in the movie as more or less a smartphone (which Abnesti also uses to select the yacht rock that pumps constantly through the prison). Twice in the movie, physical violence causes someone’s MobiPak to rupture, sending an uncontrolled torrent of drugs into the subject’s system. Many elements are retained from the story: the facility where Jeff and the others are confined is said in the story to be comfortable and full of amenities, which we see in the movie itself. It is their love that breaks Abnesti’s hold over Jeff, whereas in the short story, Jeff just becomes too horrified at what Abnesti is doing to him and the others. Where things take a major turn is with the introduction of Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett), another inmate with whom Jeff begins a friendship that eventually turns into a full-on relationship free of the influence of the drugs. Reese and Wernick make several additions to Saunders’ story, including the introduction of a major new character and changes to both Jeff and Abnesti’s histories. The movie is actually pretty faithful to the story for about half of its running time, even though the story itself fills maybe 10 pages in print.