One of the surprise movie hits of the summer is F1, a motor-racing drama starring Brad Pitt which has gone on to become the biggest blockbuster for Apple (the movie will later come to Apple TV Plus) as well as the biggest non-franchise movie of 2025 so far. However fans of the movie have another watch in store on Netflix, one which they may not have considered.
F1 was directed by Joseph Kosinski, who's perhaps best known for helming the Tom Cruise movies Top Gun: Maverick and Oblivion, and many have been comparing the new drama to the Top Gun sequel in terms of its visual style and frenetic action. But between the two films, Kosinski directed a Netflix Original which many people seem to forget about.
The film in question is called Spiderhead, and it released on Netflix on Friday, June 17, 2022, only a month after the release of Top Gun: Maverick. Unlike plenty of Netflix Originals, it remains on the platform to this day.
Spiderhead is based on a short story by George Saunders and was written by the duo behind Deadpool and Zombieland with Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller and Jurnee Smollett as the leads.
The movie is a sci-fi thriller about a prison which tests drugs on volunteers, however the overseer seems to have his own motivations and some of the drug tests amount to torture. Hemsworth plays the warden while Teller and Smollett are prisoners at the center of his latest scheme.
Unlike Maverick and F1, Spiderhead was not well received. On Rotten Tomatoes it has only a 39% Critics' Rating, and the audience score is even lower. Viewers complained about the story and concept, but praised the cast and camera work (pluses and minuses which seem to abound in other movies by the director).
Still, Spiderhead is the kind of neat sci-fi thriller that Netflix rarely makes any more, so if you want a homebound movie night after paying for theater tickets to F1, it's there for you to see.
After F1 turned out to be an Apple movie, the director is building up a real relationship with the streamers. Apple TV Plus is also set to acquire Kosinski's next movie, a UFO-centric conspiracy thriller written by the scribe behind The Order, King Richard and Gran Turismo.
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