‘Spiderhead’ Review: ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Director Sets a New Low for Netflix

variety.com:

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticThere is only one way to escape from Spiderhead in sly postmodern scamp George Saunders’ all-but-unfilmable short story “Escape from Spiderhead,” and it rhymes with skip-to-my-lou-icide.

Unlike print fiction, where pretty much anything goes, movies that feature acts of self-harm must be very careful, since audiences have been known to emulate those same acts.

Right up front, Netflix warns viewers of its woefully wrongheaded adaptation that the movie features such behavior. But if Netflix really cared about our well-being, why greenlight a film so bad, we’d do practically anything to escape from “Spiderhead” ourselves?No one would blame you for sampling it in the first place.

Saunders is a wickedly funny author with more major writing prizes than Meryl Streep has Oscars. The tricky source material was translated by “Deadpool” duo Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who understand how to walk the line between outrageous and offensive, and then given to “Top Gun: Maverick” helmer Joseph Kosinski, who clearly doesn’t.