Spiderhead is nothing but a mediocre sci-fi outing for Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller

At one point in Netflix’s Spiderhead , a creepy Chris Hemsworth tells a stressed employee “What do I always tell you? Pressure forms diamonds”. It’s a blunt, rather poor sociological take that is the stuff of Linkedin inspirational posts and could still make the book of quotes by pushy techbros. In a world of larger-than-life influencer CEOs (think Elon Musk) Spiderhead could have been about so much more than a spindly little pharmaceutical operation that isn’t what it seems to be. It’s instead a sci-fi film about a young, ambitious entrepreneur using humans to experiment with psychoactive drugs. It’s also quite possibly about the ability of human emotion, of love, of grief to break through the ceilings of glass that technology wants people to live under. The problem though is that Spiderhead is never really as visceral, affecting or even clever as it could have been.

Chris Hemsworth stars here as Steve, a suave pharma entrepreneur who runs and controls a facility where the inmates are being regularly tested on with aphrodisiacs, fear-inducing substances and other compounds that Steve – as any psychopath in these films believes – will cure the problems of the world. He is joined by Jeff, played by Miles Teller who has a history of trauma, having accidentally killed two of his friends. Incredibly, most inmates inside this facility have consented to its processes. Each inmate has been installed with a device in their back where vials for different doses are loaded. These vials can then be controlled digitally via an app. It’s a nightmarish situation alright, but it’s never clarified exactly what problems this dystopian facility is trying to solve.

Ironically, though inmates live here under a certain degree of control, they are, as is made subtly clear at different points, better off than state penitentiaries. It’s a wicked little gamble, or choice if you like and it could have been played better. Choose the hard life of state prisons ,or in exchange for serving as a mule for fancy doctors, live a pretty lavish life. The fact that the film begins with aphrodisiacs, inside a punky prison that is awash with colours and contrasts, is a teaser. Perhaps every world-changing invention begins, colourfully, with similarly noble intentions. To change the world for good. It’s not until the middle that Jeff’s hesitance, his flashbacks paint a picture of guilt and paranoia. The problem is, it never quite feels convincing.

Spiderhead – as is the name of the room where Steve conducts his observations – never quite hits the proverbial nail on the head. It moans about, hovers with intent, but never really strikes a blow. Maybe it has to with the soft-punk treatment, the aesthetic touch-ups that make this world breezier than most other genre films. Ex-Machina, which had a similarly disarming template, at least tried to crank the tension through its character and dialogue. Here the film feels like a crossover between a dread-inducing sci-fi trip and a casual episode from Too Hot to Handle. At which point one might as well discuss the performance of Hemsworth. Here the actor plays one of his more serious and committed roles to detail, but comes across as a little to unsure and naïve for a man trying to mastermind a human experimentation racket.

Either the film would have been served better by wholeheartedly embracing the kookiness of its visual by giving the characters enough tricks up their sleeve to look the crazy part this almost too casual world of sci-fi innovation feels like. And yet, Jeff comes across as incredibly stiff, acting as if he is in the minimalistic version of the same film. The music, the costumes, the nonchalance with which the despotic innovator and his subjects run into each other, share drinks and chat offer coffee, simply brushes any tension or suspense under the carpet. No power equation really exists here, because Steve behaves like the hunk next door who has just stepped in to perform a couple of checks on you. It never quite feels dire enough to want to squirm or be divided over the outcome. Even when a character dies onscreen, there is precious little in terms of emotion on either side of the equation. None of which, mind you, pull their weight in terms of conviction. The scheming entrepreneur sounds, looks and behaves too kindly, while the subjects are too gullible for their own good.

Spiderhead could have been a dystopic view on how bad choices are often better than worse choices. A facility where criminals, thugs, murderers and rapists are voluntarily tested with new-age drugs as a deal to allow them to skip incarceration is a delicious premise that could have excavated so much more than the bare-bones entertainment of watching a rich, handsome, but ultimately guileless man, botch a demonic chemical experiment. It’s not the story that we see, but the one that could have been.

Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.

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