The opening sequence and titles set up a potentially quirky and intriguing film with unsettling and subtle clashes of tones, design, colour and sound, which introduce Spiderhead as a hi-tech near-future prison research facility, where programme director (played capably by Chris Hemsworth in creepy charm mode) tests new mind/emotion-controlling drugs on the inmates for a pharmaceutical company. Miles Teller gives another of his nicely-judged and well-considered performances as the inmate who starts to question the morality and purpose of the experiments, and other supporting performances work well. Whilst the film looks great (and stylistically feels reminiscent of Kosinski's Oblivion), frustratingly, the film falls far short on the writing, as the central idea is spread very thinly indeed, one clunky generic cliché follows another, and the film lacks weight, as supposedly shocking moments have little impact in a film that plays safe and offers little beyond a basic idea.
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