Preteen girl looking at a cell phone with her parents

Family movie night? There's an app for that

Download our new mobile app on iOS and Android.

Parents' Guide to

Spiderhead

By Jennifer Green, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 15+

High-concept sci-fi drama has violence, language, sex.

Movie R 2022 107 minutes
Spiderhead Movie Poster

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

age 18+

Based on 2 parent reviews

age 18+

Poor portrayal of sexual coercion

Definitely not for kids. While the sex scenes were mild it was blatantly rape by means of coercion and not being given informed consent. It lacks the nuance necessary in it’s portrayal and acknowledgement of what happened as abuse.
age 18+

Non-consensual sex should have trigger warning

For someone who has been sexually assaulted, this triggered me and I had to turn it off after 10 minutes. With blatant rape in the form of non-consensual sex. Found it quite sickening, not my kind of film personally.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (2 ):
Kids say (2 ):

The short story-inspired concept for this film turns out to be too thin to carry a whole movie, but it still mostly works thanks to engaging performances from stars Hemsworth and Teller. The two convincingly display the wide range of emotions brought on by both powerful drugs and extreme circumstances. Spiderhead is ultimately a story about human behavior: what people are capable of, what inspires good and bad deeds, how we each come to terms with our actions, and the age-old question of whether the world would be a better place if we could control the actions of others.

Of course, a movie can't fully answer questions like these, but it can raise them in interesting ways. While Steve's motives seem to boil down to childhood abandonment issues, the prisoners' questioning of why they keep consenting to being experimented on opens up a lot to think about. Unfortunately, this is left largely unexplored, and the film comes to a somewhat abrupt closure. The laboratory setting in a vast concrete building contrasts with the warm, feel-good '70s and '80s tunes and the occasional views of a gorgeous surrounding landscape. That tonal confusion, paralleled in Hemsworth's smarmy salesman-slash-evil-mastermind performance, could unsettle viewers (as it's likely meant to). Or it could leave them indifferent, somewhere right in the middle of the story's swinging moods.

Movie Details

Inclusion information powered by

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

See how we rate