Premise: Convicts agree to be in drug tests in a remote facility for a reduced sentence.
The problem with some movies is that I’ve seen other movies before. I’m sure after “Train Comes Toward the Screen” terrified people back in the 1890s, by the time they made “Train Comes Toward the Screen 2”, audiences knew the trick and were less amazed by it. And by the time “Train Comes Toward the Screen 3” came out, people saw the train in the distance, scoffed, and said “This is going to be another one of those ‘train comes at the screen movies, isn’t it?’”. Yet, some people continued to see all the “Train Comes Toward the Screen” movies because that’s a story that appeals to them. They no longer watch for the surprise of a train coming at the screen. Rather, they start appreciating the smaller elements like the type of engine or how many carts the train is carrying. At some point, whether you like it or not, you can see enough movies of a certain ilk that any new ones either have to step up the game or risk feeling overly familiar to all but the most diehard fans of the genre.
That’s the problem with Spiderhead. I’ve seen this movie before. Even if it wasn’t called Spiderhead and had a different variation of the plot, I’ve seen Spiderhead before. Ex Machina. Oblivion. The Island. Passengers. They’re all functionally the same thing. I’m awful at predicting twists, per se. For me, watching movies is a lot more like a master chess player who sees all the potential moves on the table. 15 minutes into Spiderhead, I’m aware of the 10 different variations of the plot they could choose. I don’t know which one they’ll choose, but none will feel surprising*. For better or worse, I tend to watch these movies with hope that there’s a play I’m not seeing. I love being genuinely tricked and I’m an easy mark. The only way I’m figuring a movie out is if I’ve seen the same story before. I’m not solving it on my own.
*Another way to think about it is how once you get old enough, you realize there’s no way you can ever lose Tic Tac Toe again. You’ve mastered the formula. You move up to Connect Four, but eventually that formula become clear too. On rare occasions though, someone will find a strategy that can actually work, and it’s thrilling and humbling. You feel a little embarrassed that you fell for the trick but also thrilled to actually be surprised by a move in this game you were sure you had mastered.
For me at least, there are no surprises in Spiderhead. It’s about exactly what you think. The characters you shouldn’t trust are the exact ones you think. It plays outs exactly as you expect. Actually, I take that back. The most surprising thing about the movie is how straightforward the twists are. I was ready for Spiderhead to go a beat or two further than it did. Like, “Surely, they know we’ll expect this twist, so who is the character they want us to trust to then also be in on it?” I’m sorry to report though that the non-twist is not a twist. No one is tricking another player in basketball by shooting “granny style”. Spiderhead stops short of even the average appetite for twists.
More than anything, I finished Spiderhead unfulfilled. Chris Hemsworth is having a lot of fun, which is nice. He doesn’t read as threatening or conniving though. Miles Teller is a weirdly blank slate. I spent most of the movie thinking Jurnee Smollett would finally get to do something interesting after third act twists, but those never came. There needs to be a red herring-like term for someone like her: a character so boring that you assume they are saving them for a reveal later that never comes. The movie feels very “2020 COVID production” in the scale and isolation of it. I wanted it to be so much more interesting than it had any interest in being. Or, maybe they intended for this to appeal more to someone who has seen 1000 movies in their life rather than 4000. Occasionally, enjoying too many movies is a problem.
Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend
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