Source: Wikipedia
Spiderhead starring Chris Hemsworth plays Steve Abnesti who is a scientist in a high-tech prison with people who were convicted of violent crimes. To reduce their sentence, they volunteer to be part of an experimental drug trial created by Abnesti to evaluate the effects of different emotions from love to violence. Abnesti seems to try and make the experiments and the people involved comfortable, especially Jeff (Miles Teller). Abnesti uses Jeff for the love drug on Jeff and another inmate Heather (Tess Haubrich). The love drug has some long-lasting effects but it’s the Darkenfloxx that really gets the subjects paranoid and violent. Lizzy (Journee Smollett), who is friends with Jeff, gives her the Darkenfloxx to Jeff’s chagrin. After that, Jeff soon learns that Abnesti is not the nice guy he claims to be.
Source: Netflix Youtube Channel
Spiderhead is a Saturday afternoon movie. The plot is thin, but the soundtrack is impressive. I will say that Chris Hemsworth is good as the friendly but diabolical Steve Abnesti. He has that Thor charm, but he also has a darkness to him. Miles Teller and Journee Smollett also did well with the thin script. I wanted to know more about Abnesti’s sidekick Mark (Mark Paguio) who once admired his boss but soon sees that he’s getting out of control.
The movie went too fast to settle into these characters. I found myself rooting for Jeff and Lizzy midway to the end of the movie before then I really didn’t care. Now what I did care about was the soundtrack. The movie included a lot of songs that I grew up with like “Rise” by Herb Alpert, “You Make My Dreams Come True” by Hall & Oates and “She Blinded Me with Science” by Thomas Dolby and more. All these songs correlated to what was happening in the movie. The theme of the movie is that you may have done wrong in life and want to punish yourself, but some punishments may go too far, especially if you're being manipulated.
I was pulling for this movie because I love the actors, but it fell short. The acting and the music keeps you in it, but you really don’t care about these characters until near the end of the movie. Spiderhead is now streaming on Netflix.
Let me know what you think about Spiderhead in the comments.
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