There is no single image, or sequence, in Joseph Kosinski’s “Spiderhead” that suggests any passionate stakes in its story, its characters or the world they inhabit. Instead, frigid detachment defines the newly released film with a passionlessness that feels incongruous for the genre, and the story. Sci-fi has benefitted from the imagistic possibilities of film: characters juxtaposed in thrilling tableaus, colour and light as motif and symbol to stunning effect, and production design that feels indelible. Even bad sci-fi films retain a peculiarity in their engagement with technical possibilities that feels unique. What a feat that “Spiderhead” seems to retain nothing that announces itself as identifiably unique. In its commitment to dullness, it establishes itself as a film with no clear sense of identity only a celluloid nothingness that overwhelms any element that may offer a reprieve from the abyss of dreariness.
In a brief opening prelude, we observe two researchers, Steve Abnesti and Mark (no last name), experimenting with laugh-inducing chemicals on a patient. The scene sets up a schism that will run throughout the film: a tonal uncertainty where “Spiderhead” vacillates between attempts at broad dark humour and attempts at being genuinely unsettling in its thrill. It succeeds at neither. The film takes place in a vaguely futuristic penitentiary where prisoners volunteer to be test-subjects for chemical research in exchange for reduced sentences. It will surprise no literate adult in 2022 to know that this project is a way to exploit the incarcerated. Yet, “Spiderhead” feels removed from ideas about symbolism, context or identity that might make this potential socio-realist fable poignant. The premise itself is cogent. In typical dystopian fashion, it bends reality to a limit that feels familiar enough to evoke dread, but unreal enough to be considered “sci-fi”. But writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick cannot be credited with the promising seed of the premise. If its premise is its best asset, then it makes sense that the premise exists outside of the film.
What was the trajectory that moved George Saunders’ weird and subversive short-story “Escape from Spiderhead” (first published in The New Yorker in 2010) into this generic, colourless, big-budget Netflix film? I suspect the answer to that question, and the oral history one might write about the adaptation process for the newly released film, would prove more compelling than the film. Moment after moment, scene after scene, even with the seeds of this unnerving story planted, “Spiderhead” is aggressively ambivalent about the characters and headachingly dull. It is a dullness and lack of character that feels inconsistent with the promise of its source. The toothless nature of the script, pointedly encapsulated by a new ending which is not just less radical but laughably trite, suggests that Reese or Wernick missed the real ethos of the story. Kosinski’s glossy and empty approach to directing it suggests an emotional remove from anything here. A moment of accidental suicide propels the film into its last act, but is presented in such a defanged way as to render the moment empty. If the intention is for us to feel nothing, “Spiderhead” is effective.
Our entry-point to this world is Jeff, an inmate in jail for manslaughter after a drunken joyride proved fatal for the passengers. As played by Miles Teller, Jeff follows a particular type of Teller characters. He carries himself with a poorly concealed restlessness, a ball of anxiety that threatens to surface. A lot of that characterisation is more from what Teller brings to the role than in any thoughtful contemplation of who this person is. And, to Teller’s credit, he offers the closest thing to narrative consistence in “Spiderhead”.
For reasons the film does not deign to contextualise, Jeff is a favourite of Abnesti who, at first, seems especially preoccupied with the way the test-chemicals evokes feelings of romance in Jeff and other inmates. The mixed-gender facility allows for moments of voyeuristic thrills where the subjects are gently encouraged to have sex. Soon, the romantic potential of the chemicals is replaced for something more unnerving. Here again, the point-of-view in “Spiderhead” wavers. As things escalate, “Spiderhead” fails to evoke feelings of urgency. Intellectually, we can recognise the seediness of the issues of consent and voyeurism at play. In practice, the events in “Spiderhead” occur with a dispassionate sheen that does not build to any potent observation. There’s too much money poured into this Netflix release for it to look genuinely ugly, but I would have appreciated ugliness if it came with some identifiable element of character than the empty genericity of the cinematography here. Cinematographer Claudio Miranda, has been so proficient at evoking mood before, but here feels neutered in an approach to the film that feels robotic. Perhaps, his muted work is in step with the director’s vision.
In the absence of visual language to distinguish “Spiderhead”, the characters offer little to invest in. These are not characters, so much as they are plot-points: Chris Hemsworth as the ambiguous Abnesti, Jurnee Smollett as Rachel (an insubstantial love-interest), and Tess Haubrich as the superficially savvy Heather who eloquently explains her character by way of the unilluminating line “I’m a bitch”. Each narrative development takes the easiest way out of considering who these characters might be. Reese and Wernick’s approach to adaptation is not just unradical as sci-fi or social realism but reflects an unwillingness to even engage in complications. Jeff and Rachel must define themselves as the couple we root for, so the script bends over backwards to ensure that their crimes are grey enough that we don’t feel any difficulty in identifying with them. It’s a choice that becomes laughably grotesque in a moment where Rachel’s crime is revealed in a scene where the film all but holds up a sign to announce, PLEASE FORGIVE HER FOR THIS. Smollett, a typically dependable performer, is saddled with a character filtered through a sophomoric perception of womanhood that’s too bland to be objectionable. In resisting nuance, “Spiderhead” digs its own grave. Sci-fi has been historically root for so much social commentary, but each nod to issues of gender, race or sexuality feels paltrier than the last. There is nuance for audiences to invest in.
And it is in Chris Hemsworth, first-billed star and also producer, that the lack of nuance and identity is most obvious. The appeal of playing against type, as Abnesti, must have loomed large for Hemsworth. Best known for his work as one of the original slate of Avengers, it’s telling that of that original group, which also includes Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo, Hemsworth seems to be the one whose most notable work feels explicitly linked to Marvel Studios. Even though he’s been compelling in supporting roles elsewhere, his identity beyond Thor has been diffuse. “Spiderhead”, on the surface, offers a chance for a swerve from the good-natured bumbling of Thor and it is a swerve he cannot maintain. He’s easily the worst performer of the cast, even as his provides the rudiments to something that could make for a diverting arc. He cannot lean into the ludicrousness enough to make this work as something that approaches camp, but he also feels too self-conscious to earnestly engage with the last act reveal of his characters’ intentions. It is a performance that like the film, feels like it would benefit from a reassessment of its point. But, then, I’m not sure “Spiderhead” has a point. To have a point, the film would have something to say. And “Spiderhead” is empty.
At its very end, after a facsimile of a “resolution”, we hear a voiceover from a character for the first time in the film. The voiceover provides a pithy lesson in moralistic form for the audience that feels so turgidly trite I couldn’t help but laugh. If that voiceover is to exist as an explanation as to the point of the film, it comes up short. But it is a pointlessness that is, at least, in keeping with the rest of the film. “Spiderhead” is 107 minutes of nothingness.
“Spiderhead” is streaming on Netflix
