'Spiderhead' as the Film

Had to watch Netflix's 'Spiderhead' (2022). It's adapted from George Saunders's short story 'Escape from Spiderhead' published in The New Yorker in December 12, 2010. It wasn't intriguing enough for me to sit through it unwaveringly. I moved around doing... laundry, and still didn't miss much on screen, and no scene nor line was necessary to make me rewind it to catch it. Hahahah.

'Jeff', the prisoner and head honcho Steve Abnesti's friend, was the narrator in the short story. Seeing the story come to 'life' on the screen was fun. It made it believable that there're mad pharmaceutical companies doing these clandestine experiments and using experimental drugs on prisoners. I'm sure of it.   

In the film, 'Jeff' is played by Miles Teller. He's got a lot of chemistry with Chris Hemsworth's 'Steve Abnesti'. Chris Hemsworth was utterly distracting. Okay sure, he's a decent-enough actor, but it isn't his looks that are distracting — I can't get rid of him as Thor in my head. LOL I kept expecting Steve Abnesti to break into a fight or some cool move. Didn't happen. Mark Paguio as 'Mark Verlaine', assistant to Steve Abnesti, was pretty cool, and the scriptwriters gave him a 'good guy' tilt at the end. Sure, we might end up rooting for Jeff and Lizzy to get away and begin a new life together. The film's got too much 'feel good' factor. All the discussion about free will and ethics didn't add up.

I re-read the short story. It is a very lengthy short story. Happy to see it available in the magazine's archives still. I suppose in 2010, this was sort of frightening as people are only slowly aware of the idea of 'pharma bros', i.e Martin Skrelli in 2017, and very much later in 2020 and 2021, the opioid evils behind the Sackler family whose name is in every museum gallery and university hall, programs and endowments.

I feel that Netflix didn't do a good-enough adaptation. It highlighted the horror of what Steve Abnesti did, but it wasn't dark enough. It's a tad frustrating. The full horror didn't come through in the film. It came through in the story. 

Netflix also had the scriptwriters changed the entire ending of the film. I felt that it affected the integrity of the story. Sure, Steve Abnesti died spectacularly, on his own terms, knowingly or unknowingly, I dunno, since his MobiPack was spoilt and he was high as a kite. Netflix turned the ending upside down and the one character that should have died, lived. The ending in the story is a lot darker than the film — Jeff was Darkenfloxxed and he died. And that should have been that. Stark. 

From somewhere, something kind asked, Would you like to go back? It’s completely up to you. Your body appears salvageable.  No, I thought, no, thanks, I’ve had enough.

My only regret was Mom. I hoped someday, in some better place, I’d get a chance to explain it to her, and maybe she’d be proud of me, one last time, after all these years.

From across the woods, as if by common accord, birds left their trees and darted upward. I joined them, flew among them, they did not recognize me as something apart from them, and I was happy, so happy, because for the first time in years, and forevermore, I had not killed, and never would.