TV - Movies
Critics Hold
Nothing Back In
Their Spiderhead
Reviews
By SAM SKOPP
It didn't take long for Netflix's original sci-fi film "Spiderhead" to become a hit for the streaming service numbers-wise. But even though the time viewers collectively spent watching "Spiderhead" totaled 35,400,000 hours, professional reviewers were pretty much unanimously critical of the film.
"Spiderhead" currently holds a score of 54 on Metacritic, indicating that reactions from critics were generally middling. While reviewers have cited a range of reasons for the film falling short of its potential, numerous critics agreed that its source material — a short story by acclaimed speculative fiction author George Saunders — is the superior telling of its story.
One review, for example, is titled "Netflix's 'Spiderhead' Sucks the Life Out of a Beautifully Weird Short Story." In it, author and self-professed Saunders fan Julia Glassman accuses the film of removing some horrific and boundary-pushing material from the original story, ultimately warping its meaning.