Because of his reputation as an action star, and his leading role in Marvel’s Thor movies, we tend to expect Chris Hemsworth to portray the hero all of the time. However, Hemsworth really plays against type in the new trailer for the Netflix original film, Spiderhead. That’s why it’s fitting that the actor’s last line in the trailer seems to call out that fact: “Beautiful people get away with too much. I say that having benefited myself from time to time.”
In the film, Hemsworth portrays Steve Abnesti, a scientist who runs the Spiderhead penitentiary that gives the movie its name. Steve is all smiles for his inmates even as he doses them with mind-altering drugs that seem capable of transforming their personalities. The inmates don’t get a lot of say about when and how they’re experimented on. The tradeoff is that they might get reduced sentences. Assuming ,of course, that they live through the experience.
Two inmates, Jeff (Miles Teller) and Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett), form a connection outside of Steve’s experiments. And he just can’t leave it alone. Steve can’t resist pushing his experiments on the two even further until they are forced to question whether the connection they feel is real … or if it’s dependent upon the surgically attached devices that drug them at Steve’s whim.
Tess Haubrich also stars in the film as Heather, with BeBe Bettencourt as Emma, Mark Paguio as Verlaine, Sam Delich as Adam, Joey Vieira as Miguel, Daniel Reader as Ryan, Ron Smyck as Dave, Stephen Tongun as Ray, and Charles Parnell as Knowles.
Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski helmed Spiderhead from a script by Deadpool writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, which in turn was based upon the short story “Escape from Spiderhead” by George Saunders. It will premiere on Netflix on June 17.
