REVIEW: SPIDERHEAD Will Leave Your Head Feeling Like a Spiderweb
Imagine if instead of going to a state penitentiary for a crime you committed, you agreed to be a test subject for a visionary genius. You allow yourself to be injected with mind-altering drugs with the assumption you are doing it to help the greater good. In director Joseph Kosinski‘s new movie, SPIDERHEAD, that is exactly what Jeff (Miles Teller) decides to do. Except when he is injected with a drug that generates the feeling of love into him, he begins to question what he signed up for and the man behind the testing, Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth).
Based on a short story featured in The Néw Yorker by George Saunders, SPIDERHEAD is described as a thriller movie but it lacks the thrilling aspect. A good thriller features moments that will have you on the edge of your seat and questioning every move the characters are making, this is not the case with SPIDERHEAD. The movie is extremely predictable and will be extremely triggering for some. The movie focuses on subjects “acknowledging” the drug being put into their system, but then the audience has to watch as these characters are made to do things against their will. On paper this might have made sense, but it failed in execution. The bond needed between the audience and the characters to truly pull off this movie is never created. Instead, you spend most of your time wondering what you got yourself into and how you can get yourself out of it.
Teller and Hemsworth do an okay job as our protagonist Jeff (Teller) and our antagonist Abnesti (Hemsworth), but neither are ever fully able to embrace their characters. Hemsworth is supposed to be portraying an evil genius, but comes off a little too comical and good natured while Teller’s Jeff doesn’t do enough to get the audience to stand behind him and his reasons for investigating Abnesti. The duo is joined in the movie by Jurnee Smollett (Rachel), who also does an okay job, but again, you never become fully invested in her character or why she is at the prison. She instead plays a plot piece that was used to help develop Teller’s character rather than help develop the overall story.
SPIDERHEAD is not a movie I would rush to stream this weekend. It is a movie that you have to give all your attention to if you hope to understand what is going on in it. And, honestly, it is not worth giving all your attention to. Thankfully, Kosinski and Teller have another movie out in theaters now, Top Gun: Maverick, that you should rush out and see if you are looking to see something from the director and actor. If you are a fan of Hemsworth and want to watch something he is in, give yourself a few weeks and then see Thor: Love and Thunder when it is released on July 8.
Grade: C