Spiderhead

The new Netflix dystopian thriller from Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski is based on a short story by George Saunders.

In the story – which was originally published in The New Yorker in 2010 – Jeff is also unhappy about choosing to give Darkenfloxx to one of the other inmates, but his response to the situation is different. The ending to Saunders' short story is rather different to the conclusion of the film – and is also far, far darker. These drugs include one which creates the feeling of love, one which causes the subject to tell the truth etc, and the worst of them all is Darkenfloxx – a substance that causes the user unbearable pain.

Spiderhead takes place at the eponymous prison/medical testing facility run by Hemsworth's Steve Abnesti, a scientist who conducts drug trials on prisoners ...

In the aftermath of Heather's death, Steve invites Jeff to his office and they take Laffodil, a drug that makes you laugh (get it). Later, Lizzy is trialled on a drug that makes you afraid of things – anything ("Like gluten?" They fight; Steve puts the other inmates on Lizzy and Jeff and heads for his plane. However, it turns out Mark isn't sick but instead gave Jeff the control for Steve's pack which Jeff is now controlling, flooding Steve with the drugs he was testing. The story focuses on the concept of free will, and how it functions within our socio-economic and political world. Jeff asks Mark why he works with someone like Steve, Mark replies that he wanted to help people and Jeff says, "You still can." Lizzy yells at Jeff to get it over with, so he turns up the dial. So instead of asking him to pick one girl who will get the Darkenfloxx, Steve is going to administer it to Heather and see Jeff's response while on Verbulace. Jeff refuses, and Steve tells him to sleep on it. Jeff is given a dose of a drug called N-40, which makes everything appear more beautiful than he finds it — like MDMA but without the risks. Meanwhile, the object of Jeff's affection is actually Lizzy (Smollett), a fellow inmate who works in the kitchen. Jeff and Steve seem to have a halfway decent working relationship, power dynamics aside. Spiderhead takes place at the eponymous prison/medical testing facility run by Hemsworth's Steve Abnesti, a scientist who conducts drug trials on prisoners who have consented to the treatment in lieu of serving their sentences in an actual prison.

The ending of the new Netflix chiller 'Spiderhead' is a bit different from the George Saunders short story it's based on. Here's what it all means.

It may seem like a small change, but in the story the drama doesn’t come from a big reveal, but rather Jeff’s interior struggles. While Spiderhead is spiritually faithful to the Saunders story, the plot twist involving an obedience drug is pretty different. Here’s what happens in the twist ending of Spiderhead, and how it changes one aspect of the original George Saunders short story.

What could've been a bold and trippy work of cinema is instead a mediocre, made-for-streaming movie that watches more like an episode of TV.

Garland, who wrote and directed Ex Machina and Annihilation, is a provocateur whose imagination sprints past outer limits and he could’ve filled out the world of Spiderhead with wild abandon. Spiderhead feels like a half-baked story, unable to capitalise on the intriguing seed at the centre of its story. Jeff (Miles Teller) is a prisoner serving out his sentence in an isolated scientific facility situated on an island archipelago.

The Netflix film from Joseph Koskinski (“Top Gun: Maverick”) stars Hemsworth as a hunky warden dosing prisoners with experimental drugs.

Hemsworth, on the other hand, is granted the opportunity to indulge in a bit more flamboyance, flashing a series of winning smiles and making all sorts of convivial claims that intimate he’s really an overlord with a heart of gold. Kosinski gussies up with this material with a score of Yacht Rock classics (how cheeky!) and a few of his trademark flourishes, including compositions marked by diagonal visual lines, remote and striking sci-fi compounds, and aerial vistas of aircrafts traversing enormous blue skies (and, in this case, boats skimming across vast aquamarine oceans). Formally speaking, Spiderhead looks gorgeous. He’s sweet on Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett), who works in the kitchen preparing daily snacks for her incarcerated comrades, although Jeff decides to distance himself from her following trials of Luvactin, which creates overwhelming love and sexual desire for others—be it for beautiful Heather (Tess Haubrich) or sleazy Sarah (Angie Milliken). While Steve dopes up all of his guinea pigs, his favorite is Jeff (Teller), who we know from flashbacks is at Spiderhead thanks to a drunk-driving accident that ended in tragedy. Steve’s Spiderhead Penitentiary and Research Center is a scientific station where convicted criminals have chosen to reside, since it grants them escape from the terror of general-population prison life and a comfortable existence lounging around game rooms, cafeterias and hallways that mix concrete, wood paneling and colorful, stylish décor straight out of a ‘70s sci-fi movie. Director Joseph Kosinski reconfirmed the unrivaled power of movie superstardom with last month’s Top Gun: Maverick, a sequel whose unlikely triumph can be credited, first and foremost, to Tom Cruise’s peerless charisma.

Steve is running a drug program that makes everyone feel what they want to, however, things are not that simple as they look from the outside.

Steve gets to the audio system and tells every subject to find Jeff and kill him because he wants to take everyone’s freedom away. The movie ends with Steve crashing his plane into a mountain and Jeff, and Lizzy getting away from ‘Spiderhead’ penitentiary. He immediately chooses Steve on the remote and starts giving him Phobica, which gives him a drug that would make people fear things that are put in front of them. Mark says that Steve is a genius and he promised him that they are going to do something big that would help humanity. They get into a fight after Steve administers Drakenfloxx on Lizzy. The drug makes her go crazy and she starts killing herself. Jeff reveals the truth that the only drug getting tested on her is “B6” which allows others to do stuff as they are told. He gets to know that Steve is conducting drug tests by choosing numbers from a BINGO card and mainly, it’s B6 that he’s testing. He smashed the car in a tree and the accident killed two people. At first, Jeff is reluctant to answer, but after a few days, the pressure from the committee forces her to say yes and they give Drakenfloxx to Heather. As soon as they give her that compound, she starts behaving erratically and kills herself. Steve tells Jeff that he needs to decide if Sarah gets it or Heather gets it. So, Drakenfloxx is one of the drugs that are used in the program and it can take the subjects to a very dark corner of their lives. He helps Steve by letting him know what kind of things the other subject are feeling when these drugs are administered to them.

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.

Chris Hemsworth is ready to deliver another action-packed flick on Netflix's small screen and we reveal where Spiderhead was filmed.

The Whitsunday Islands was home to the Spiderhead Penitentiary in the Netflix film, lending the story its dystopian qualities. Spiderhead was initially supposed to film in the United States in the state of Atlanta, however, Chris Hemsworth persuaded Netflix to shoot in his home country as reported by The Sydney Morning Herald: We confirm where Spiderhead was filmed, discuss some of the film’s key locations, and reveal why Hemsworth wanted to shoot in this specific location.

"Spiderhead" toggles between brutal, abrupt violence and a redemptive happy ending a long, long way from the short story's. The actors do what they can en ...

The script for “Spiderhead” makes a rookie mistake: It lets the audience get too far out ahead of the Teller character’s moral and narrative awakening. The facetious use of obvious pop hits (”She Blinded Me With Science,” et al.) belongs to “Deadpool” wise-assery, not this premise. It’s fair game for a movie to go its own way, but director Joseph Kosinski toggles between brutal, abrupt violence — there’s a flashback to a body flying through a windshield we really don’t need to see twice — and a redemptive happy ending a long, long way from the short story’s. “Spiderhead” takes its time revealing what’s up with these experiments, and whether there’s a way out of this pharmacological hell. In the control room, aka Spiderhead, aided by a morally queasy assistant (Mark Paguio), Hemsworth’s character takes smug delight in administering, via an app on his phone, strategic doses of un-inhibitors to his subjects. Teller plays one of the inmates, haunted by a fatal mistake behind the wheel years earlier; Smollett portrays his lover and fellow inmate, likewise trying to shut out her own personal tragedy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.