'Spiderhead' Ending Explained: Did Steve mislead Jeff and others by giving them dangerous drugs?
Joseph Kosinski’s latest movie ‘Spiderhead’ has finally been released on Netflix and it has one of the most interesting concepts that we have seen in the recent past. The movie is based on George Saunders’ collection of short stories, titled ‘Escape from Spiderhead’, which was published in 2010 in The New Yorker. The aforementioned short stories got positive reviews from across the globe and the streaming platform acquired the rights to adapt them into a movie.
The movie revolves around a visionary scientist named Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth) who has engineered a collection of drugs that make people feel what they want to. If you want to feel happy, there’s a drug for that. If you want to feel horny, luckily, there’s a drug for that too. However, things go really haywire when something really crazy starts happening in the state-of-the-art penitentiary where the mainland prison inmates are taken for drug experiments.
RELATED ARTICLES
What is 'Spiderhead' based on? Netflix film is inspired by a New Yorker article
Jeff (Miles Teller) is trying to help them by being one of the first ones to ever try the drug program. He helps Steve by letting him know what kind of things the other subject are feeling when these drugs are administered to them. Steve says, “Drip On”, and the subjects say, “acknowledge”. But what happens that puts the program in jeopardy. Let’s take a look.
‘Spiderhead’ Ending Explained: What happens to Heather after taking Drakenfloxx?
So, Drakenfloxx is one of the drugs that are used in the program and it can take the subjects to a very dark corner of their lives. Steve tells Jeff that he needs to decide if Sarah gets it or Heather gets it. At first, Jeff is reluctant to answer, but after a few days, the pressure from the committee forces her to say yes and they give Drakenfloxx to Heather. As soon as they give her that compound, she starts behaving erratically and kills herself. This is how things start getting downhill.
Steve goes into Heather’s compartment to check her and drops the keys to his little drawer where he keeps his dossier. Jeff takes advantage of the situation and reads what he’s doing. He gets to know that Steve is conducting drug tests by choosing numbers from a BINGO card and mainly, it’s B6 that he’s testing. Jeff also realizes that they are making a compound named ‘OBDX’. As soon as Steve comes back, Jeff acts like he is shocked after seeing what has happened and Steve tells him that it’s not his fault.
Jeff feels really sad and talks to Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett). He tells her what happened that fateful night when he was drunk and driving his car. He smashed the car in a tree and the accident killed two people. They kiss each other and when they get up in the morning, Jeff tells her briefly what’s happening inside this penitentiary. Steve arrives and gets really surprised when he realizes that Jeff and Lizzy are completing each other’s sentences. This makes him feel that they have feelings for each other.
In the final moments of the movie, Mark, who is Steve’s partner in the program, takes a box of drugs to Jeff where he asks why is he supporting Steve in this experiment? Mark says that Steve is a genius and he promised him that they are going to do something big that would help humanity.
‘Spiderhead’ Ending Explained: Did Mark betray Steve and helped Jeff?
In the end, we see Steve experimenting on Lizzy and asking Jeff if he loves her. Jeff tries evading the question, but Steve is really appalled to know how much he loves her. However, he says that he doesn’t know Lizzy’s truth. After a tense moment, Lizzy reveals that she was put into jail for killing her own nine-month-old daughter. She said that she put the baby in her car and went to work when she arrived there after three hours, her daughter was no more.
Jeff is holding the remote to give Drakenfloxx to her and as soon he uses the remote to give her the drug. He immediately chooses Steve on the remote and starts giving him Phobica, which gives him a drug that would make people fear things that are put in front of them. On the other hand, he then uses Drakenfloxx on Steve and reveals that Mark fitted a bottle of the drug in his device.
Steve starts getting paranoid and tells Jeff to stop this. Jeff reveals the truth that the only drug getting tested on her is “B6” which allows others to do stuff as they are told. Steve reveals that this drug can change humanity for good and there will be no accidents and no separations if they are told what to do.
Jeff gets irritated and uses B6 on Steve as well. They get into a fight after Steve administers Drakenfloxx on Lizzy. The drug makes her go crazy and she starts killing herself. Steve and Jeff get into a fistfight and as soon as Jeff sees Lizzy’s condition, he puts Steve down to the ground by punching him in the face.
He manages to save Lizzy and gets out of the cell, trying to escape. Steve gets to the audio system and tells every subject to find Jeff and kill him because he wants to take everyone’s freedom away. Luckily, he gets away from everyone and they both get out of the penitentiary. However, Steve also manages to get out and take his private plane to get away from the island. However, he has been drugged with a heavy dosage of B6 and is not in his senses.
Meanwhile, Jeff and Lizzy take the boat and leave the island. The movie ends with Steve crashing his plane into a mountain and Jeff, and Lizzy getting away from ‘Spiderhead’ penitentiary.