Amped up for Thor: Love and Thunder? Technically, that is Chris Hemsworth’s second blockbuster this summer. And the first is already available for streaming right now.
The other title is Spiderhead, a new thriller directed by Joseph Kosinski — who also has two big movies this summer. (His other is a little indie action picture you might have heard of called Top Gun: Maverick.) In this film, Hemsworth stars as the head of a mysterious prison where the inmates — including Miles Teller and Jurnee Smollett — willingly subject themselves to experiments where they are injected with drugs that alter their perception of reality. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, for one thing, the reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, Spiderhead currently boasts a 52 percent rating. On Metacritic, the number is 55, indicating generally mixed reviews. On one end of the spectrum, Collider called the film “delightfully bizarre and unsettling.“ At the other, Richard Roeper described it as a thriller with “idiocy in its veins.” In other words, Spiderhead is drawing far less positive notices than Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick.
Here is the film’s official synopsis:
In a state-of-the-art penitentiary run by brilliant visionary Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth), inmates wear a surgically attached device that administers dosages of mind-altering drugs in exchange for commuted sentences. There are no bars, no cells, or orange jumpsuits. In Spiderhead, incarcerated volunteers are free to be themselves. Until they’re not. At times, they’re a better version. Need to lighten up? There’s a drug for that. At a loss for words? There’s a drug for that, too. But when two subjects, Jeff (Miles Teller) and Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett), form a connection, their path to redemption take a twistier turn, as Abnesti’s experiments start to push the limits of free will altogether.
Spiderhead is streaming now on Netflix. You can find the direct link to the movie right here.
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