Spiderhead, to me, seems to be the result of somebody trying to make a Drew Goddard film with no involvement of Drew Goddard himself. In fact, it feels as if this was made in an attempt to describe what Drew Goddard does. Unfortunately, I’m not sure it ever really gets any closer than a surface level aesthetic understanding, and a lot of that is the casting of Chris Hemsworth as a cult leader.
The trailer was quite intriguing, and I found myself fairly excited to watch this when it popped up after something on Netflix. Within about ten minutes of starting the film it was hard to keep the enthusiasm I’d started with. I suppose formulaic is a good word to describe it, which is the exact opposite of what it should be going for as a mystery sci-fi thriller thing. Even down to the soundtrack.
What it really amounts to is an exercise in collecting a paycheque from Netflix. It’s a paint by numbers, straight to streaming blockbuster of sorts with a couple of big names in Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller, and it’s got a narrative that’s just about intriguing enough for a two minute trailer. There’s little else to it.
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