3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Spiderhead

2022, Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion) -- Netflix

OK, weird; I think I just side-stepped (my head canon for moving between alternate realities in the multiverse) from a reality where The Gorge was done by Kosinski, which was going to lead to a paragraph about directors working with actors they like. Miles Teller was in Kosinski's Top Gun: Maverick (and his wildfire fighting movie Only the Brave -- ohhh, that's why its in My List)and is in this. Buuut, that's not this reality, so Spiderhead is actually his latest flick. That said, three flicks together does warrant that paragraph buuuut I kind of derailed it.

Anywayz.

The original short story called "Escape From Spiderhead" provides the key focus of this movie -- incarcerated criminals participating in drug trials voluntarily, drugs that elicit great emotional responses, and how the doctor administering the trials is manipulating the people so that the outcomes are favourable to his end goals, no matter the damage it causes to the inmates. Kosinski builds a movie around that premise.

Kosinski likes his architectural imagery. Even with Oblivion being a scifi movie set on an post-apocalyptic Earth, the look and feel of the watch posts that Jack and Vic live in, is spectacular, all curved widescreen smooth plastic and glossy white materials. This is not the post where I indulge in the design aesthetics, but Spiderhead establishes that in the initial fly-over of the facility, its incongruity against the isolated rural landscape. Once we are inside, it continues, all wide range concrete and wood but with pristine white observation rooms. Like Kent, I too enjoy this a lot.

Side-note: I have been doing a lot of rewatching of late as my brain gravitates to consuming known-factors. Enough, in fact, that I feel they warrant a "Rewatch Snippets" post.

Via flashbacks, we get that inmate Jeff (Miles Teller, The Gorge) drove drunk and killed his close friend, the younger brother of his girlfriend. It tortures him, but other than that, he is a stable guy. Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth, Extraction) leads the testing with his complicit assistant Mark (Mark Paguio, Lonesome). They appear to be the only two running the experiments, other than a handful of security/orderlies. Its odd, as it is very clear that there are a good number of violent, sociopathic criminals in there. Abnesti is friendly, confident and more than a little detached from the idea he is doing this to people, despite his affability. Alongside Jeff, we meet Lizzie (Jurnee Smollett, Lovecraft Country), who works the kitchens of the facility as well as being an inmate. Jeff and Lizzie connect.

Abnesti's testing is focused on marketable drugs, drugs the company can sell as legal recreationals. But you can tell by the way that he pushes Jeff that there is a darker motive at play. He also constantly plays a rather sinister card that it is not he that is demanding Jeff do the less than pleasant aspects of the testing, but the nameless faceless council running the facility. But Abnesti is not above manipulating everyone, including Mark, to get the results he wants.

Harkening back to the "Stanford prison experiment", where fake guards were asked to psychologically punish/torture fake prisoners, much of the movie focuses on complicity: Abnesti getting Jeff to perform the tests himself, Abnesti guilting Mark into helping him even when his conscience weighs on him. Through coercion and deception, Jeff does some things he is not proud of. Only when he starts to unravel Abnesti's lies does he start to question what is really going on.

The movie could have been darker, but it didn't want to be a horror / torture-porn movie. Its more a play of personalities, with obviously likeable Abnesti being setup to be truly heinous, while Jeff, initially meek and agreeable is understood to have performed a truly dark deed, but... not one we cannot  have sympathy for. I cannot fault the movie for the performances, but... it was all a bit vanilla? For a movie that was mostly about what Abnesti could convince Jeff to do, it never felt as if anything but the expected would happen.