Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Chris Hemsworth, Netflix, Black Mirror
Ellie Kemp
Fans have been left divided over a thriller starring Miles Teller, comparing it to a knock-off version of Black Mirror.
As a super fan of the six-season Netflix series - which returns for its seventh drop in 2025 - that doesn't sound at all like a bad thing. But movie buffs reckon otherwise.
Many of us are still reeling from Teller's stellar performance as tortured jazz drummer Andrew Neiman in 2014's Whiplash.
Back for more mental anguish, he stars opposite Chris Hemsworth as a drunk driver locked up for killing his friend.
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But this high-tech prison is like no other, offering inmates the chance to knock years off their sentences by testing out mind-altering drugs.
As they confront their pasts, these guinea pigs suffer the effects of N-40, a love drug, and Darkenfloxx, a drug that inflicts extreme pain and fear.
Naturally, this leads to absolute 'off-the-rails' chaos, as one reviewer put it.
Titled Spiderhead after the prison the movie is set at, the 2022 release is based on George Saunders' 2010 short story, Escape from Spiderhead.
You can watch the trailer below:
With Top Gun: Maverick's Joseph Kosinski calling the shots and the Deadpool franchise's Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick behind the screenplay, it's likely fans saw huge potential in this release.
But, discussing Spiderhead on Reddit, many appeared disappointed.
One fan gave their honest verdict, saying: "I really didn’t enjoy it at all. I liked the general premise but just thought the execution was a bit poor."
While someone else praised Teller's performance and the movie's 'ear candy' audio mix, they complained: "Tone was trying way to hard to be Black Mirror, the switch between comedy and horror was not executed well. It needed to be a lot darker."
Another agreed: "It had its moments, but felt like a B-tier Black Mirror episode," as one viewer reckoned: "It was basically an extended Black Mirror episode. It was just long enough in my opinion."
And people couldn't seem to get over the movie's lacklustre ending, as another fan commented: "Honestly the ending was my only gripe, it turned into a comedy out of nowhere."
While fans compared Spiderhead to Black Mirror, its Rotten Tomatoes score certainly doesn't live up to it.
Critics awarded the thriller a measly 39 percent on the review aggregator site, while viewers were even less favorable, giving it just 30 percent. Black Mirror, meanwhile, has a solid 83 percent score across its six seasons.
Spiderhead's critics' consensus reads: "Spiderhead's top-shelf cast and well-written source material are almost enough to compensate for its frequent failure to live up to its potential."
It's not all bad though, as the Boston Globe's Mark Feeney said: "Spiderhead really goes off the rails at the end. But at least it has rails to go off of, and they’re pretty good ones."
That's more than what can be said for so many movies nowadays...
Spiderhead is available to stream now on Netflix.