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.

Spiderhead movie review: Director Joseph Kosinski's second film of 2022 also features Miles Teller, but it comes across as a pandemic project that he made ...

And both vehicles that can connect the isolated facility to the mainland—a plane and a boat—are positively vintage, as is the film’s old-school rock soundtrack. Jeff’s redemption arc is genuinely moving, although—and this is emblematic of the film—it would’ve been even more arresting had his crimes been more morally complex. As a character, Steve is too thinly drawn, and the film’s dedication to project him as the protagonist of the story is a pointless distraction that gets in the way of you forming a bond with Jeff. And the tone is all over the place. But while the characters in Tron Legacy, Oblivion and Maverick embodied a more literal solitude, Spiderhead is the the first time that Kosinski is actively addressing these anxieties via plot. Of course, there’s a catch to why the inmates at Spiderhead are left relatively unchecked. Jeff, for instance, was involved in a drunk driving accident that killed his buddy—a plot point that mirrors something that really happened to Teller, leaving him with emotional wounds that he occasionally talks about in interviews, and facial scars that will now also be a part of any character that he ever plays.

"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.

A thoughtful meditation on love, sex and pharmaceuticals, it includes this chilling bit of dialogue from Abnesti, a prison warden who tests mood-altering drugs ...

Jeff asks: “Like gluten?” Abnesti replies: “Or thinking too much.” Looks like the filmmakers had a hit of that themselves. Like a good Philip K. Dick story, there’s a lot of untapped potential in the original text to explore notions of free will, brain chemistry, identity and perception. Abnesti is explaining that Phobica can be given to people to make them afraid of things that are bad for them. Say someone is blue, because of true love? It stars Chris Hemsworth as Abnesti, and Miles Teller as Jeff, a prisoner who has agreed to be a human guinea pig in exchange for serving his time in a relatively pleasant, open-concept prison, Brutalist in design but otherwise not unlike a university campus. “Say someone can’t love?

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.

On attendait plus de cet ambitieux film de science-fiction de Joseph Kosinski avec Chris Hemsworth et Miles Teller.

Rapidement, Jeff en vient à douter du bien-fondé de ce à quoi il accepte de se soumettre. La première demi-heure est intéressante et juste assez surprenante pour donner envie d’en savoir plus. Et c’est le plus frustrant.

Découvrez la critique du film Spiderhead de Joseph Kosinski - Puisque Top Gun : Maverick est resté dans les cartons de Paramount pendant de longs mois à ...

Le réalisateur construit ses images sur les barrières symboliques que ses héros façonnent entre eux et un potentiel bonheur qu’ils estiment ne pas mériter. Tout le cinéma de Joseph Kosinski pourrait être résumé à cette idée : il faut reconstituer la ligne, tel un fil d’Ariane qui indique la direction à prendre. Dans ces moments-là, où la mise en scène de Kosinski centralise par sa gestion du décor le regard des corps en présence, Spiderhead parvient à créer un réel sentiment de malaise, surtout lors de son pivot à mi-parcours. Malheureusement, c’est aussi à partir de là que le film se perd, et enclenche une suite de révélations qui ne vont jamais au bout de leur logique, y compris dans un dernier acte finalement très sage. À vrai dire, le personnage d’Abnesti, sorte de pervers narcissique qui n’assume qu’à moitié l’inhumanité de ses jeux pervers, représente toute l’impossibilité du film à construire une réelle ambiguïté morale, pourtant au cœur de son postulat. Puisque Top Gun : Maverick est resté dans les cartons de Paramount pendant de longs mois à cause de la pandémie, Joseph Kosinski a eu l’opportunité de réaliser un autre film en 2022. Adapté d’une nouvelle de George Saunders, Spiderhead possède une dimension ouvertement orwellienne, qui montre dès ses premières minutes que les prisonniers consentent à ces tests qui accaparent leur corps et leur esprit.

Synopsis : Des détenus enfermés dans un pénitencier deviennent les cobayes d'un médicament expérimental qui agit sur leurs émotions en échange d'une ...

Une bouffée de fraîcheur qui ne tarde cependant pas à se tarir lorsque des intentions plus dramatiques et psychologiques se font ressentir, aussi superficielles soient-elles. Un texte fascinant et troublant qui a été artificiellement gonflé pour son passage au cinéma. Dans les mains des scénaristes Rhett Reese et Paul Wernick (les auteurs des diptyques sur Deadpool et Zombieland), cela donne un récit dystopique particulièrement générique. Le long métrage débute pourtant en trombe.

Le réalisateur de “Top Gun : Maverick” a tourné pour Netflix ce film SF sur une prison de luxe où les détenus sont les cobayes d'un apprenti sorcier – Chris ...

Avant qu’il soit rattrapé par les souvenirs d’un nuit d’horreur où, conduisant sous les effets grisants de l’alcool, il a tué son meilleur ami. Les dangers du progrès avancent encore plus masqués dans Spiderhead, qui s’ouvre par les grands éclats de rire d’un prisonnier ravi. En attendant que le Covid veuille bien laisser Top Gun : Maverick sortir dans les salles de cinéma, Joseph Kosinski a tourné ce film d’anticipation qui le ramène à l’inspiration d’ Oblivion, sa première collaboration avec Tom Cruise. On y découvrait un monde futuriste où l’être humain résistait encore, mais où la vérité de ses émotions et sa victoire même étaient rendues incertaines par le clonage et l’avancée de la science.

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.

On attendait plus de cet ambitieux film de science-fiction de Joseph Kosinski avec Chris Hemsworth et Miles Teller.

Rapidement, Jeff en vient à douter du bien-fondé de ce à quoi il accepte de se soumettre. La première demi-heure est intéressante et juste assez surprenante pour donner envie d’en savoir plus. Et c’est le plus frustrant.

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.

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.

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.

In 'Spiderhead,' nothing is what it seems. Here's a breakdown of that wild twist ending,. Spiderhead Explained Netflix Movie. Netflix.

Where the story is about abuse and exploitation, the film is about the perseverance of love. This asserts a kind of cynicism and unavoidability inherent in Spiderhead, where in the film, Jeff starts off with a kind of naive optimism. Unlike in the film, B6 doesn’t come in the form of a twist. Perhaps the latter is the way it is because of Hollywood’s need for a happy ending. The two get out right in the nick of time, though, and race back to the mainland on a boat. Perhaps B6 was always the end goal, and the other drugs were simply a means to an end. The love drug, for example, has the potential to allow the administrator to test whether or not a subject will harm his loved one while under the influence of B6. The honesty drug is simply another form of obedience, too, and Darkenfloxx is nothing more than an elevated form of torture. But the end of Spiderhead isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. One can safely assume, then, that once Jeff and Lizzy return to the mainland, they will live a happy life together. And on a smaller scale, Jeff’s love for Lizzy is what finally gives him the strength to break free from Spiderhead’s grasp, despite initially believing that he deserved his treatment at the facility due to the nature of the crime that sent him there. Jeff then decides to stop his boss once and for all, and the two get in a fight, which leads Steve’s drug box to break and subsequently flood him with a cocktail of his own nefarious potions. This time, we consider the ending of the new Netflix psychological thriller Spiderhead. Yes, prepare for spoilers.

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?

Sci-fi thriller Spiderhead starring Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller and Jurnee Smollett is out now on Netflix. Based on the George Saunders short story ...

Spiderhead certainly feels like a one-off. Would you like to see a Spiderhead sequel or are you content with how the movie ended? For those who really liked the movie, you might be curious about the possibility of a follow-up film.

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.

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.