Spiderhead movie review: More lows than highs in pharmaceutical thriller from Top Gun: Maverick director

Language: English In the dispiriting vision of our near-future in Spiderhead, prisoners are exploited as guinea pigs by a pharmaceutical company testing mood-altering drugs. With Top Gun: Maverick still cruising at the global box office, director Joseph Kosinski sets course for a second hit with a much smaller dystopian thriller he shot during the pandemic. The ideas of behavioural programming and the juxtaposition of individual liberty vs social order may bring to mind Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. One minute, he’s dancing without a care to Roxy Music’s “More Than This”; the next, he is making a punishment seem like a privilege to his test subjects. Despite all the movie’s flaws, Spiderhead is another telling audition reel for a director who is yet to deliver fully on his promise as a sci-fi filmmaker.