[FILM]
SPIDERHEAD
En route to Spiderhead, about as pleasant a place as its name suggests.
★★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX)
CERT 15 / 107 MINS
DIRECTOR Joseph Kosinski
CAST Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller, Jurnee Smollett, Charles Parnell
PLOT In a remote location, a prison houses convicts who have committed terrible crimes.
But it’s also a futuristic research laboratory where inmates, including Jeff (Teller), are experimented on by the resident scientific genius, Abnesti (Hemsworth).
THE PECULIARLY TITLED Spiderhead arrives on Netflix with about as little fanfare as a film starring an Avenger, written by the duo behind Deadpool, and directed by the man behind the summer’s most beloved blockbuster could possibly garner. This seems even more surprising upon watching the opening minutes, in which Joseph Kosinski draws on his Top Gun: Maverick box of tricks to deploy striking shots of a Cessna voyaging through azure skies (co-lead Miles Teller is another Maverick link). But once that seaplane parks, it’s clear that this is a very different proposition to that high-altitude, fist-pumping action flick. A claustrophobic, headfucky thriller about mysterious experiments, Spiderhead is set almost entirely in just two rooms. No need for speed here — but while it’s admirable that Kosinski and his cast are trying something new, this experiment is only partially successful.