Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Chris Hemsworth, Netflix, TV and Film, Black Mirror
Tom Fenton
Spiderhead, Netflix's new sci-fi thriller starring Chris Hemsworth, has become one of the Australian actor's lowest rated films, following a poor critical reception.
Released earlier this month, there was plenty of hype surrounding the chilling movie, which had drawn some comparisons to the hugely popular Black Mirror after the release of the trailer.
However, with the film having been out for a number of weeks now, the reviews are very much in...and they don't make for great reading.
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On film review website Rotten Tomatoes, Spiderhead has a rating of just 44% at the time of writing. Worse still, on its audience rating, the adaptation of George Saunders's dark sci-fi epic has a score of 35% - putting it below 2016's Ghostbusters remake in which Hemsworth also appeared.
A comparison to some of the 38-year-old's other well known films on Rotten Tomatoes shows just how poorly Spiderhead has been received so far.
Thor: Ragnarok, for instance, has a superb score of 93% on the Tomatometer, while 2013's Rush, where Hemsworth plays legendary F1 driver James Hunt, remains on 89%.
Across the board, the critical response to Spiderhead has been negative, with many wondering why the film doesn't quite capture the dark eeriness of the book its based on.
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The plot certainly sounds creepy enough, centring around a prisoner undergoing futuristic drug trials, set within the sterile walls of Spiderhead research compound on a remote island.
However, as Louis Chilton points out, a critic with The Independent: "In Netflix’s Spiderhead, the ending has been radically Hollywoodised – swapped out wholesale for something people will more easily swallow."
Also featuring the likes of Whiplash star Miles Teller, as well as Jurnee Smollett, it has a cast that could rival just about another big budget movie.
And yet, for many viewers it falls flat in some key areas, leading to a respectable - but hardly emphatic - 5.5 out of 10 viewer rating on IMDB.
Spiderhead most certainly isn't the worst received film of Hemsworth's illustrious acting career.
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On the contrary, that title goes to 2012's Red Dawn, with earned a pitiful 15% rating on the Tomatometer.
The action-war remake of a 1984 classic was panned by critics, although audience feedback was generally more positive.
As for Hemsworth, he'll be hoping that his upcoming starring role in Thor: Love and Thunder will represent a return to form - in what could be his Marvel swan-song as the much-loved superhero.