Spiderhead review: Chris Hemsworth’s best performance to date

Minor spoilers of Spiderhead ahead

Netflix was promoting its upcoming sci-fi thriller Spiderhead with full force. Now it’s pretty clear why. The movie stars Chris Hemsworth as Warden Steve Abnesti.

He’s a scientist at a penitentiary where inmates are used as lab rats for experimental pharmaceuticals. These drugs are able to alter human emotions. They can make you feel happy, sad, make you laugh uncontrollably or make you feel attracted to someone.

Overall, the prison isn’t that bad. Inmates can walk anywhere and have all kinds of facilities and sources of entertainment. But, of course, they can’t go outside. Even though these inmates walk around freely, it still feels claustrophobic which is very cool.

Joseph Kosinski created a very interesting world for this movie. He recently directed Top Gun: Maverick, too. The screenplay is written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, which is based on the dystopian short story “Escape from Spiderhead” by George Saunders.

Chris Hemsworth is at his best in Spiderhead, an enjoyable sci-fi thriller

Spiderhead is Chris Hemsworth’s best performance to date. As Abnesti, he plays a brilliant, boundary pushing, and line crossing scientist who’s using all these people for his own profit.

The movie also stars Jurnee Smollett and Miles Teller as the two main inmates, Lizzy and Jeff. Both of them have gone through horrible things in the past and now feel like they deserve whatever is happening to them in this facility.

Jeff falls in love with Lizzy, and he keeps trying to tell her that but something holds him back. All the bizarre things in this facility that happen are normal to the inmates. Things change, however, when a new kind of drug is used and it leads to the death of someone in front of Jeff. Now he doesn’t want this to happen to anyone else.

Spiderhead is very enjoyable and the plot is interesting. But, even though its runtime is way less than two hours, the movie still feels stretched out. There are a lot of unnecessary elements in the movie that might bother some people. Other than that, the film is pretty good.

This movie is filled with great acting, and it has a unique story and characters. Towards the end it turns into a generic escape film, but at least the buildup to that was good enough.

Spiderhead‘s sci-fi elements and the way it looks is very different from other movies in the genre. However, it’s hardly even a sci-fi movie. It’s a blend of so many genres that it can’t really be classified. There’s a lot of gore in this but still it holds back on the brutality of it all. It goes for a satirical dystopian approach rather than having a completely serious tone.

All that said, this movie is definitely worth a watch, it’s unique. There’s a lot to look forward to including some good dark humor.

Rating: 7/10