{"id":1590401,"date":"2022-08-05T08:02:16","date_gmt":"2022-08-05T12:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1590401"},"modified":"2022-08-05T08:02:46","modified_gmt":"2022-08-05T12:02:46","slug":"netflixs-spiderhead-is-a-subpar-retelling-of-a-classic-short-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/netflixs-spiderhead-is-a-subpar-retelling-of-a-classic-short-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Netflix\u2019s \u2018Spiderhead\u2019 Is A Subpar Retelling Of A Classic Short Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fnetflixs-spiderhead-is-a-subpar-retelling-of-a-classic-short-story%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1590401&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Netflix and The New Yorker<em> <\/em>have combined their vast resources to produce a stunningly abysmal two-hour slog based on George Saunders\u2019 short story titled \u201cEscape from Spiderhead.\u201d The story\u2019s film adaptation, merely titled \u201cSpiderhead,\u201d directed by Joseph Kosinski and released last month, retells and somewhat recasts its source material. Nevertheless, the creative team had a would-be blockbuster handed to them on a silver platter in the form of Saunders\u2019 thought-provoking satire, and they screwed it up.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSpiderhead\u201d introduces Jeff (Miles Teller) as a patient at a health care facility. He receives medicine through a remotely controlled injection system called a Mobi-Pak, hooked directly into his body like an insulin pump. It soon becomes clear that this facility is, in fact, an experimental prison in which Jeff and his fellow inmates enjoy considerable freedoms \u2014 open doors, meals, fish tanks, espresso machines, sexual liaisons, and more \u2014 in exchange for consenting to receive experimental mind-altering drugs via their Mobi-Paks. Ultimately, they hope to be reformed and released despite the gravity of their crimes and the length of their sentences.<\/p>\n<p>There is no overarching, faceless nemesis like Huxley\u2019s World State or Orwell\u2019s Big Brother. Rather there\u2019s a man behind the curtain named Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth), a would-be Silicon Valley tech-bro with his own half-baked hopes for making the world a better place.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Abnesti\u2019s facility is called Spiderhead because the various wards of the prison branch from its control center like the legs of a spider. Abnesti, who insists that his inmates call him Steve, runs his experiments from the control center while sipping coffee, clad in fitted jeans, a T-shirt, and a blazer, like a well-bred millennial.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Either Hemsworth\u2019s acting or the film\u2019s subpar writing leave the audience wanting more from Abnesti, he never quite reaches villain status as he isn\u2019t a particularly interesting antagonist. Despite having nefarious research goals and profit motives, Abnesti\u2019s character is not compelling.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Years ago, in the heyday of Hollywood\u2019s studio system, hundreds of movies were produced haphazardly. If someone somewhere needed a project to work on, someone would just dust off an unused script, find a contracted director with some downtime, scrape together a few actors, and throw them all together in an unused studio lot. \u201cSpiderhead\u201d feels like one such film; everything about it looks hasty.<\/p>\n<p>Occasional lapses in directorial judgment can be forgiven, but it seems like Kosinski wasn\u2019t even trying. The Mobi-Paks looked like a GameCube affixed to the inmates\u2019 lower spines, and not a scene went by in which disbelief was reliably suspended. Any semblance of dystopian gravity is ruined by the soundtrack, which attempts to unsettle you with the likes of the Doobie Brothers and Hall &#038; Oates, and the opening and closing credits feature a cartoonish pink font.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Befuddled by the nuance of Saunders\u2019 story, the writers prop the movie up on clich\u00e9s. Abnesti dies in a fireball, Jeff gets the girl, and the two lovingly sail off into the sunset together at the end.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The flat laziness of this finale stands is vastly different than Saunders\u2019 original ending. In his telling, Jeff commits suicide rather than administer a pain-inducing drug to another inmate as Jeff explains from beyond the grave that he\u2019s finally happy because now he can never again commit murder. The movie doesn\u2019t even gesture toward such poignancy; it carries all of the externals of Saunders\u2019 story and none of its heart.\u00a0<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Max Bindernagel is an English teacher. He writes from Washington, DC.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-comments mt-30 mt-sm-60\">\n<div class=\"article-comments-container d-flex flex-column align-items-center py-30\">\n    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"110\" height=\"106\" src=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/fdrlst-mark.svg\" class=\"img-fluid mb-20\" alt=\"The Federalist logo eagle mark\" \/>    <\/p>\n<p>Unlock commenting by joining the Federalist Community.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/plans\/pricing\/\" class=\"btn btn-on-white\">Subscribe<\/a>  <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Netflix and The New Yorker have combined their vast resources to produce a stunningly abysmal two-hour slog based on George Saunders\u2019 short story titled \u201cEscape from Spiderhead.\u201d The story\u2019s film<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1223,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1590401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1223"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1590401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1590401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1590401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1590401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}