Spiderhead

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.

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.

"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.

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.

"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.

Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller, and Jurnee Smollett come together in this intriguing sci-fi thriller. Here's how you can stream Spiderhead.

Twelve Monkeys (1995): Twelve Monkeys is a science fiction film about a convict, who volunteers for a mission where he has to travel back in time to gather information and find out the main reason behind a man-made virus that wiped out most of the human population. The film stars Anthony Mackie, Jamie Dornan, Ally Ioannides, and Katie Aselton. Synchronic is available for streaming on Netflix. Jeff (Miles Teller) is one of the subjects of his latest experiment and he is administered a new drug called N-40 alongside the other inmate volunteers. Of course, this system causes those on the top levels to eat as much as they can while those on the ground level get almost nothing, causing conflict in the prison. Like Spiderhead, Twelve Monkeys is about a prison inmate who volunteers for a dangerous mission. Directed by Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick, Tron: Legacy). Based on The New Yorker short story, “Escape From Spiderhead,” by George Saunders. The residents are fed via a food platform that drops downward, initially filled with food on the top floor but gradually reducing as the food descends through the tower’s levels. In February 2019, it was announced that a film adaptation of the short story was in the works. The trailer introduced us to Mr. Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth), who runs a state-of-the-art penitentiary called Spiderhead. Abnesti is a brilliant visionary who experiments on his subjects with mind-altering drugs. Spiderhead stars Chris Hemsworth, Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country), and Miles Teller (Top Gun: Maverick). Hemsworth also produced the film alongside Reese and Wernick, Eric Newman, Agnes Chu, Geneva Wasserman, Tommy Harper, and Jeremy Steckler. The story was subsequently published in Saunders’ collection of short stories titled Tenth of December in 2013. Netflix and Chris Hemsworth are fast becoming a match made in film heaven.

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.

Miles Teller and Chris Hemsworth go head-to-head in a prison that tests mind-altering drugs in the new 'Spiderhead' sci-fi movie streaming on Netflix.

Spiderhead keeps the acid tone of the story (though sadly missing a lot of the bizarre flowery language), as its characters are subjected to more and more manipulative treatments. The creepy premise is adapted (by Deadpool guys Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick) from George Saunders' story "Escape from Spiderhead," which was first published in The New Yorker in 2010, and, if you've never read him before, is a perfect introduction to Saunders' ability to weave together the funny and the macabre. The facility is built on a remote tropical island apart from civilization, but things seem to be happening in the world outside that are connected to the drugs. Jeff and his fellow inmates have been fitted with "MobiPaks," mechanical cartridges attached at the base of their spines that hold vials of different types of liquid, within which are prototypes of mind-control drugs with marketable nicknames like "Verbaluce" and "Laffodil." Daily, Jeff visits an observation room run by Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth), the guy in charge of the facility who carries out various experiments on the somewhat willing participants, testing the efficacy of the company's new drugs. Jeff (Miles Teller) lives in the Spiderhead, a high-tech private prison facility housing a group of convicts who have volunteered to participate in an experimental program rather than wait out their sentences in a state-run prison. Whether they're set in the far future, a few weeks from now, or an alternate version of the past, even the weirdest and darkest science fiction stories are mirrors to our own present.

Chris Hemsworth ponders musingly, or muses ponderously, in the foreground of a barren concrete Image: Netflix. Happy Friday, Polygon readers! This week brings a ...

It is now available for rent at a reduced price of $5.99. In this one, the Crawley family travels to France after a mysterious inheritance. This South African crime thriller comes from French director Fabien Martorell, who previously worked on documentaries and short films. Unlike the 1950 version with Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, and Elizabeth Taylor, or the 1991 movie with Steve Martin, Diane Keaton, and Kimberly Williams, the new adaptation focuses on a Cuban American family. Nearly 30 years in the making, VFX artist-director Phil Tippett’s Mad God is a nightmarish odyssey through a dystopian world of Boschian grotesqueries and phantasmagorical landscapes. She brings across her character’s conflicted state in captivating ways, with an alluring effervescence and genuine personality. The third film in what’s been described as director Joachim Trier’s “Oslo trilogy,” The Worst Person in the World is a romantic black comedy centered on Julie (Renate Reinsve), a medical student stumbling through an underwhelming love life and a troubled career path. Morbius is what happens when there’s a studio desire for another Venom, but without much thought as to how Venom connected with anyone. Audiences do turn out for characters they love, but they also show up for characters played by people, by actors who give them weird quirks and specific mannerisms. And now you can rent it at the reduced price of $5.99. “Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski and the writers of Deadpool team up to adapt a dystopian short story by George Saunders” is a real description of a real movie that really exists. This time out, he’s working with Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller, and the writing team behind the Deadpool movies and 6 Underground on a cerebral sci-fi.

This article contains Spiderhead spoilers. It looks almost blissful. That serene sunset Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth) imagines he's flying toward might as ...

So being asked to let Jeff go free and destroy his life’s work is a bridge too far, and one that gives Steve the free will to fight back. At the end of the movie, Jeff commands Steve to open the doors to Spiderhead and help him destroy the scientist’s life’s work. The short and obvious answer is that Jeff appealed to Mark’s sympathies. It is Jeff’s self-loathing guilt, his new pampered lifestyle, and the B-6 that all influence his decisions. Once perfected, Steve intended to sell it to businesses (and governments?) under the name O-B-D-X (Obediex). What sort of authority wouldn’t want something that “could get you to follow an order antithetical to your deepest values and emotions?” So Steve would try to pump Jeff up with “love” for Heather (Tess Haubrich) via N-40, but the experiment wasn’t to prove that it would make folks become infatuated with one another—even to the point of ripping their clothes off right in front of voyeurs! However, Jeff still was consenting to things he might not have otherwise—like eventually giving Heather the Darkenfluxx. Was he broken down by Steve’s pressure?

George Saunders is legendary in the literary community. He's one of the few authors who has made a name for himself almost entirely on short stories, ...

Jeff, in the story, killed a friend in a drunken fight as a teenager. The regret eats at him, and when Heather dies and he faces the prospect of condemning Rachel to the same fate, he thinks, “It was like all I had to do to be a killer again was sit there and wait.” Jeff’s “escape” is his resistance to complicity. Saunders borrows the language of advertising and the ambitions of institutions to grapple with their dehumanizing effects. Erecting a monumental frame for his parable could, as I’m sure the filmmakers argued, heighten the scope of the pharma company’s power in the narrative, a visual symbol of their unstoppable plutocracy, but I couldn’t help but think of how expensive it all looked, how only a major studio could afford to build it. In Kosinski’s adaptation, it’s the developing love between Jeff and Lizzy that motivates them to fight back against the corporate juggernaut. After rereading the story in preparation for the film, I wondered how they would turn what essentially adds up to a bottled parable into a big-budget film, and to my surprise, Kosinski and his screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (who also scripted the Deadpool films) pretty faithfully stick to Saunders’s plot. The whole moral point is that the goodness of humanity persists even when it’s clinically proven that there isn’t love there. In one experiment, Jeff is introduced to Heather. They are both asked what they think of each other, attraction-wise, and they both reply that they’re mostly indifferent. In the testing room sit Heather and Rachel, who don’t know that they both, earlier that day, fell in love with and had intense sex with the same person who at this very moment is watching them behind the two-way glass. He now teaches at a highly respected MFA program at Syracuse, but in the bio of his first book, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996), it says that he “works as a geophysical engineer” and that “he has explored for oil in Sumatra, played guitar in a Texas bar band, and worked in a slaughterhouse.” He was 38. To start, here is a summary of Saunders’s original: a man named Jeff is a prisoner in a facility that tests out some pretty high-concept drugs. But when the drug wears off, Jeff retains absolutely none of these emotions, and neither does Heather.

Joseph Kosinski's film conceals its cards, to appear 'cerebral'. As the latter hour reveals, it's not as smart as it thinks it is.

Kosinski’s film doesn’t have the slow-burn suspense of the first season of Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg’s Homecoming (2019), starring Julia Roberts in a superbly calibrated performance. “I want to make this world a better place,” Abnesti keeps telling his colleague, Mark (Mark Paguio), almost as if to remind him of the promised land that inventors like him are destined for, even if it passes through some less than righteous alleys. The Spiderhead, a facility where inmates are given their own rooms, looks like a Bond villain’s lair from the outside and has the interiors of a newly-funded tech start-up. Adapted from a George Saunders’ short story that appeared in the New Yorker magazine in 2010, one can’t help but draw parallels with Silicon Valley’s Big Tech that still didn’t have the kind of influence then, the one it has a decade later. They’re even given the illusion of having a say in matters, like most subjects in these experiments. “Drip on?” Hemsworth asks a man, who responds with ‘Acknowledge’ and then begins to laugh hysterically because of the drug.

The only commonality between the two films besides Kosinski—Miles Teller—along with Chris Hemsworth, is the saving grace of the dystopic sci-fi film. The film ...

But beyond the premise, the film does not have much to offer—rather, in a hurry to say everything, it says nothing at all. The film revolves around the power dynamics between Steve and Jeff which—on the face of it—is cordial. At one point, Steve says, “This is science, Jeff. And in science, we have to explore the unknown. Jeff (Teller) is one of the inmates who is serving a sentence for manslaughter after a drunken car ride led to the death of two of his close ones. They are assigned chores, enabling a sense of routine and responsibility in them. Before any drug is induced, the inmates must explicitly say “acknowledge”, making them feel that they have a ‘say’ in the matter.

Spiderhead director Joseph Kosinski and producer Eric Newman address the truth behind their new Netflix thriller.

To do it in an American accent, to be so charming and funny and entertaining, but also have the starkness and just the complexity of this almost sociopathic character to me was such a fun thing to see on set every single day and I’m really, really excited for people to see it.” “I don’t think there’s anything in this film that isn’t in the not-so-distant future for us. While the film does have a futuristic feel to it with the minimalist facility and technology used to administer the drugs, both insist that the events of Spiderhead are closer to reality than you might think.

How does the new Netflix movie starring Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller stack up next to the story it's based on?

Abnesti, meanwhile, gets to his private plane and takes off, but still overwhelmed by the different emotions and sensations in his system, crashes into the side of a mountain. Jeff manages to get to Lizzy in time and pull the Darkenfloxx out of her MobiPak before it’s fully delivered. In both the story and the movie, Abnesti uses Luvactin to make Jeff have sex and fall in love, one after the other, with two different women. We don’t see much of him in the short story, but in the movie he’s played by Mark Paguio and he’s treated by Abnesti almost as a butler and bit of a punching bag, instead of an equal and fellow scientist. In the movie at least, he’s also an addict: He’s got a MobiPak attached to his lower back and pumps himself with some of his formulas. Thematically, that really locked in the movie for us in terms of creating a love story between Jeff and Lizzy, two people who fall in love in the most inhospitable of climates for love: prison walls.” Abnesti controls the MobiPaks through a remote-control device, which is visualized in the movie as more or less a smartphone (which Abnesti also uses to select the yacht rock that pumps constantly through the prison). Twice in the movie, physical violence causes someone’s MobiPak to rupture, sending an uncontrolled torrent of drugs into the subject’s system. Many elements are retained from the story: the facility where Jeff and the others are confined is said in the story to be comfortable and full of amenities, which we see in the movie itself. It is their love that breaks Abnesti’s hold over Jeff, whereas in the short story, Jeff just becomes too horrified at what Abnesti is doing to him and the others. Where things take a major turn is with the introduction of Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett), another inmate with whom Jeff begins a friendship that eventually turns into a full-on relationship free of the influence of the drugs. Reese and Wernick make several additions to Saunders’ story, including the introduction of a major new character and changes to both Jeff and Abnesti’s histories. The movie is actually pretty faithful to the story for about half of its running time, even though the story itself fills maybe 10 pages in print.

A dark fable about corporate obedience gets Miles Teller and Chris Hemsworth—and loses its teeth.

(In the movie, Abnesti has been trying and failing to devise a drug to render people docile—which is just a bit of flattery for all the average folks out there who are convinced they’d have been conscientious objectors in the Milgram Obedience Experiment. Milgram didn’t even need drugs to prove otherwise!) Jeff decides that the only way out is to commit suicide by ODing on Darkenfloxx himself. In an absurd rush at the end to reassure the audience that everyone will be fine, the movie delivers the breathless news that both Jeff and Lizzy have already served their time, even as Abnesti’s disillusioned assistant arrives at the lab with the police—not a positive development in any Saunders short story I can imagine, but treated here like the advent of the cavalry. The movie turns Abnesti into a rogue scientist, an individual whose schemes can be thwarted by exposure, but the Abnesti of the short story is just a middle man, part of a system that can’t be overthrown because it’s everywhere. After he refuses to consent to the experiment, Abnesti steps out to get a vial of another drug that will render him compliant. “Even if I didn’t like the person very much, even if I hated the person, I still wouldn’t want to do it.” It’s easier, after all, to suffer for the people we love than for the sake of flawed strangers. (In the movie, he drives drunk and slams into a tree, killing two passengers, including his own wife.) “I don’t even know why I did it,” he admits. Now they—the unseen board whom Abnesti says he takes his orders from—want to administer the drug to one of the women while Jeff describes his response under the tongue-loosening influence of Verbaluce. In the film, the lab is a brutalist concrete outpost on an unspoiled island. “I just didn’t want to do that to anyone,” he realizes. As with all dosings in Spiderhead, the inmates must verbally consent to the proceedings by saying “Acknowledge.” When Jeff shows no preference for saving either woman, the experiment is deemed a success and neither gets Darkenfloxx. But later, Abnesti calls Jeff in to explain that these results aren’t good enough. They can also make people fall briefly but madly in love with whoever happens to be in the room. But entertainment conventions demand that our heroes rebel, fight back, and then light out for the territories, as if injustice can be eluded with a change of scenery.

Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller, and Jurnee Smollett star in the new sci-fi thriller from Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski.

Since then, Haubrich has starred in Australian television programs Pine Gap and Bad Mothers, while also landing a recurring part in the Bourne spin-off television series Treadstone. Tess Haubrich stars as Heather, a prisoner at Spiderhead who embraces her reputation as an agitator. Miles Teller made an impact with his debut film role in Rabbit Holeas a teen guilt-ridden over his part in the accidental death of a toddler. Jones will also be reprising his Fury Road role in Furiosa, once again sharing the screen with Hemsworth. Jurnee Smollett stars as Lizzy, a prisoner at the Spiderhead penitentiary who willingly signs up to participate in experiments involving mind-altering drugs in exchange for a lenient sentence. In exchange for a commuted sentence, Jeff agrees to volunteer for an experiment involving mind-altering drugs that are administered from a surgically attached device.

The Thor actor speaks to CinemaBlend about playing his character in Netflix's Spiderhead and revealed the moment he was scared to shoot.

When it comes to Chris Hemsworth, fans will surely be excited to see him return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and suit up as Thor once more. The movie follows Chris Hemsworth’s character, Steve Abnesti ,as he tests a behavior-altering drug on convicts played by Miles Teller, Jurnee Smolett, Tess Haubrich and more. Though Chris Hemsworth had trepidations about playing someone under the influence of the Darkenfloxx in a scene, he made it work.

Netflix's Spiderhead (Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller) adapts the George Saunders short story "Escape from Spiderhead." Here's what happened at the end of ...

The final scene of the story, however, involves a second forced Darkenfloxx—but with another sexual partner, not some romantic interest. As in the film, the first forced Darkenfloxx drip for one of Jeff’s sexual partners ends in her death. The obedience drug is used in the story, but it is not the primary purpose of the experiments. Jeff then uses the drug controls on Abnesti, who resists and still manages to Darkenfloxx Lizzy. Before the Lizzy experiment, however, Jeff convinces Abnesti’s assistant to remove the obedience drug from his pack and outfit Abnesti instead with the drug. With both blockbuster film and TV adaptations of hit novels—Ready Player One, Dune, Brave New World, and, most ambitiously, The Three-Body Problem (yet to come)—and newer adaptations of short stories—Arrival, the Invisible Man, and now Spiderhead—the big and small screens are scouring the library for new source material.