Chris Hemsworth Shines As The Corporate Boss of Your Nightmares in ‘Spiderhead’

After years of saving the planet with his magic hammer, Chris Hemsworth finally gets a chance to play a villain in Spiderhead, the new Netflix thriller that began streaming on Friday. And, as it turns out, he’s really good at being bad.

Directed by Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kasinski, Spiderhead is an adaption of George Saunders’s 2010 dystopian short story, “Escape From Spiderhead,” which you can read in New Yorker magazine. In the movie, Hemsworth stars as Steve Abnesti, a mad scientist who runs a seemingly benevolent prison. Absenti’s prisoners are not kept behind bars, aren’t forced to eat prison slop, and are allowed to roam the prison grounds as they please. The catch? The prisoners must partake in human drug trials for some decidedly experimental pharmaceuticals.

Though he’s both a prison guard and a researcher, Absenti neatly falls into the role of a corporate overlord, keeping his employees—or in this case, inmates—in line using manipulative management strategies and corporate jargon. He insists on his prisoners calling him by his first name, Steve. He’s their friend, after all. Equals. It just so happens that “Steve” controls every aspect of the inmates’ lives. But don’t worry, he’s super nice about it! He has an open-door office policy and goes out of his way to get his prisoners their small requests (like a set of new copper pots for Jurnee Smollett’s character, a cook). But one prisoner, Jeff (Miles Teller), begins to question Absenti’s methods, and then cracks of his hypocrisy begin to show.

Here’s where Hemsworth shines, in finding the line between a man who is both undeniably charming and who you want to punch squarely in the face. He injects just the right level of smarm into his voice as he insists to Jeff that it’s not him, Absenti, asking Jeff to do something unpleasant, it’s the gosh-darn committee. Absenti is on Jeff’s side, he really is. Later, Hemsworth smile goes dangerous as he reminds Smollett’s character of her heinous crime, a not-so-friendly reminder of the power he has over her. And, as it turns out, he actually gets pretty angry when Jeff barges in on him. What happened to that open-door policy? Well, that’s Jeff’s fault, for abusing it.

A specific brand of high-energy, corporate narcissism that Hemsworth taps into. Up until his final moments, Absenti’s ego is untouchable. And, according to Hemsworth, that’s what attracted him to the character in the first place. In an interview for the Spiderhead press notes, Hemsworth said, “He’s a guy who lacks social etiquette, but it’s coupled with a massive ego, a huge amount of drive, and an obsessive nature. All the ingredients for a pretty wild individual! I really wanted to play with that, but give him a real sense of humor and charisma; he hasn’t gotten to the place he’s in by just being intelligent. And to me, he comes across funny mainly because there’s no filter on what he says or does. Just a large ego-driven personality that just pushes right past any subtleties or courtesies we might normally apply in our conversations or interactions.”

While the script never quite comes together in a satisfying manner, Hemsworth’s compelling performance is enough to keep your interest until the end. Clearly, we need to cast Thor in more evil roles.