Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Joseph Kosinski, Netflix.
Ticking the technical tricks boxes, this science fiction thriller is a genre-bending and broodingly chucklesome, uninspiring psychological thriller.
Based on The New Yorker short story by George Saunders, Spiderhead is directed by Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy, Top Gun: Maverick) and written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Deadpool, Zombieland).
In a state-of-the-art penitentiary run by brilliant visionary Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth, Thor), inmates wear a surgically attached device that administers dosages of mind-altering drugs in exchange for commuted sentences.
At a loss for words? There’s a drug for that. Need to lighten up? There’s a drug for that too. Another one that makes you laugh uncontrollably. A love drug stirs deep desires for another person. There are malicious drugs too, like the one which causes extreme terror.
There are no cells, no bars or orange jumpsuits. Incarcerated volunteers are free to be themselves. Until they’re not, that is. When two subjects, Jeff (Miles Teller) and fellow prisoner Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett) form a connection, their path to redemption becomes twisted, as Abnesti’s experiments start to push the limits of free will altogether.
Jeff is a prisoner serving out his sentence in an isolated scientific facility situated on an island archipelago. In exchange for the luxury of living in sleek, modern accommodation and dining on gourmet meals, Jeff and his cohort are subjected to chemical experiments.
Jeff suspects there’s a greater ambition to Steve’s experiments (as we can see) since Steve’s assistant, Verlaine (Mark Paguio) is increasingly uncomfortable with what’s being done.
A prison system with an open-door policy — where the incarcerated can cook for themselves, work out when they wish and have their sense of self — is somehow difficult to visualise.
