SpiderheadMovies like Spiderhead
- Key Features:
- Ethical dilemma, Mind control, Dystopian setting, Psychological manipulation, Moral ambiguity, Questioning authority, Confinement, Thriller, Isolation, Power dynamics, Human experimentation, Technology-centric, Nudity-moderate, Violence-moderate
- Tone:
- serious, cynical, suspense-driven
- Target Audience:
- Thriller enthusiasts, Sci-fi fans, Viewers interested in ethical dilemmas, Fans of psychological thrillers
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Anxiety → Revelation
Spiderhead

A prisoner in a state-of-the-art penitentiary begins to question the purpose of the emotion-controlling drugs he's testing for a pharmaceutical genius.
Spiderhead
The old and overcrowded penitentiaries are just a memory. Inmates now serve their sentence in a state of deep sleep that renders them harmless, and has drastically reduced recidivism. Until one day, a psychologist in charge of monitoring the mental state of inmates finds himself confronted with a prisoner over whom he's lost all control.

A man trapped in an automated prison must outsmart a computer in order to escape and try and find his way back to the outside world that may already be wiped out.

Lee Ray Oliver, a death row inmate, is given a second chance at life if he agrees to undergo a new chemical treatment used to modify behavior.

20 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a psychological study that ultimately spirals out of control.

Ren Amari is the driven inventor of a revolutionary new drug. OtherLife expands the brain's sense of time and creates virtual reality directly in the user's mind. With OtherLife, mere seconds in real life feel like hours or days of exciting adventures. As Ren and her colleagues race around the clock to launch OtherLife, the government muscles in to use the drugs as a radical solution to prison overcrowding. They will create virtual cells where criminals serve long sentences in just minutes of real time. When Ren resists, she finds herself an unwilling guinea pig trapped in a prison cell in her mind. She must escape before she descends into madness, and then regain control of OtherLife before others suffer the same fate.

A student gets his senses enhanced by an experimental drug. But abuse is not an option.

A mentally disturbed man takes residence in a halfway house. His mind gradually slips back into the realm created by his illness, where he replays a key part of his childhood.

Four volunteers sign up for what initially appears to be a typical paid research study, only to discover that they've unwittingly become involved with a classified government program that was said to have been terminated nearly two decades ago.

Terminal Island, New York: 2020. Overcrowding in the US penal system has reached a breaking point. Prisons have been turned over to a monolithic Weyland Corporation, which sees jails full of thugs as an opportunity for televised sport. Adrenalized inmates, a global audience hungry for violence and a spectacular, enclosed arena come together to form the 'Death Race', the biggest, most brutal event.

While on a class observation trip at a local mental hospital, young psychology major Abby Jones, has a chilling encounter with high-risk patient, Harmon Porter. She returns home for an evening of normal study with her two roommates unaware of the darkness she’s awakened within him.

An impoverished teen seeking to escape the clutches of a human trafficker must weigh living up to his moral code against his struggle to survive.

When the Universe decides what it wants, it's pointless to resist. With his family's life at stake, Joseph Steadman finds himself the unwilling test subject of a maniacal scientist in a battle that could save the world – or destroy it.

20 volunteers agree to take part in a seemingly well-paid experiment advertised by the university. It is supposed to be about aggressive behavior in an artificial prison situation. A journalist senses a story behind the ad and smuggles himself in among the test subjects. They are randomly divided into prisoners and guards. What seems like a game at the beginning soon turns into bloody seriousness.

In 1971, Stanford's Professor Philip Zimbardo conducts a controversial psychology experiment in which college students pretend to be either prisoners or guards, but the proceedings soon get out of hand. Based on a true story.

An entry-level employee at a powerful corporation finds himself occupying a corner office, but at a dangerous price—he must spy on his boss's old mentor to secure for him a multi-billion dollar advantage.

An unsettling look at reality television, where a disturbing game show has its contestants ending their lives for the public's enjoyment.

Set in San Tiburon, the world's most dangerous maximum-security penitentiary and home to the world's most treacherous superpowered criminals, where tensions among the inmates and staff heighten, leading to anarchy that engulfs the prison and order is turned upside down.

A woman, accidentally caught in a dark deal, turns the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human logic.

An imprisoned ex-police inspector discovers that the entire penitentiary is controlled by an inmate running a crime syndicate and becomes part of the crime empire.

Once again tampering with mother nature to disastrous results, Dr. Herbert West continues his research while serving time in a maximum security prison for his previous exploits. West's limited prison-cell experiments are suddenly interrupted by the arrival of a new prison doctor and the brother of the girl who suffered from West's experiments 13 years earlier.

Mind-control technology has taken society by a storm, a multiplayer on-line game called "Slayers" allows players to control human prisoners in mass-scale. Simon controls Kable, the online champion of the game. Kable's ultimate challenge becomes regaining his identity and independence by defeating the game's mastermind.

The new warden of a small prison farm in Arkansas tries to clean it up of corruption after initially posing as an inmate.

A drama centered on the relationship between journalist Michael Finkel and Christian Longo, an FBI Most Wanted List murderer who for years lived outside the U.S. under Finkel's name.

When an extortionist threatens to force a multi-suicide unless a huge ransom is paid, only Peter Parker can stop him with his new powers as Spider-Man.

A young man who was sentenced to 7 years in prison for robbing a post office ends up spending 30 years in solitary confinement. During this time, his own personality is supplanted by his alter ego, Charles Bronson.

In the year 2035, convict James Cole reluctantly volunteers to be sent back in time to discover the origin of a deadly virus that wiped out nearly all of the earth's population and forced the survivors into underground communities. But when Cole is mistakenly sent to 1990 instead of 1996, he's arrested and locked up in a mental hospital. There he meets psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly and the son of a famous virus expert who may hold the key to the Army of the 12 Monkeys; thought to be responsible for unleashing the killer disease.

Two fugitives land in hot water when they take a hostage who poses a threat to their well-being.

Five dangerous patients, suffering from extreme phobias at a government testing facility, are put to the ultimate test under the supervision of a crazed doctor and his quest to weaponize fear.

Syd March is an employee at a clinic that sells injections of live viruses harvested from sick celebrities to obsessed fans. When he becomes infected with the disease that kills super sensation Hannah Geist, Syd becomes a target for collectors and rabid fans. He must unravel the mystery surrounding her death before he suffers the same fate.

A gritty coming of age thriller about a young girl sent to juvenile prison for the murder of her abusive step father. The film follows Anna Nix's journey into the dark world of an all girls jail where she discovers complex relationships, drugs, mental illness and her eventual search for redemption.

A trio of interweaved transgressive tales, telling a bizarre stories of suburban patricide and a miraculous flight from justice, a mad sex experiment which unleashes a disfiguring plague, and the obsessive sexual relationship between two prison inmates.

Four brilliant university students are forced to confront themselves in terrifying ways when their Quantum Physics experiment leads to an entangled parallel existence that leaves them questioning who they are and what is real.

A teenager with no memory of his past finds himself among a group of boys living in a walled enclosure surrounded by a massive, ever-changing maze. As he struggles to adapt to their rules and society, he begins to uncover clues that may lead to escape and the truth behind their confinement.

Years of carrying out death row executions have taken a toll on prison warden Bernadine Williams. As she prepares to execute another inmate, Bernadine must confront the psychological and emotional demons her job creates, ultimately connecting her to the man she is sanctioned to kill.

A young man becomes convinced that the solution to all his problems is to live in jail, and he will do whatever it takes to get it.

A young psychiatrist applies for a job at a mental asylum and must pass a test by interviewing four patients. He must figure out which of the patients, is in fact, the doctor that he would be replacing if hired.

John 'Breacher' Wharton leads an elite DEA task force that takes on the world's deadliest drug cartels. When the team successfully executes a high-stakes raid on a cartel safe house, they think their work is done – until, one-by-one, the team members mysteriously start to be eliminated. As the body count rises, everyone is a suspect.

During an exclusive tour, a power breakdown inside a secret prison known as the Death House sends two agents fighting through a labyrinth of horrors while being pursued by a ruthless army of roaming inmates. As they fight to escape, the agents push toward the lowest depths of the facility where they learn a supernatural group of evil beings is their only chance for survival.

A corporate risk-management consultant must determine whether or not to terminate an artificial being's life that was made in a laboratory environment.

Investigative journalist Eddie Brock attempts a comeback following a scandal, but accidentally becomes the host of Venom, a violent, super powerful alien symbiote. Soon, he must rely on his newfound powers to protect the world from a shadowy organization looking for a symbiote of their own.

After being bitten by a genetically altered spider at Oscorp, nerdy but endearing high school student Peter Parker is endowed with amazing powers to become the superhero known as Spider-Man.

After an experimental drug trial goes awry, the test subjects face a terrifying side effect: if you fall asleep you die. Trapped in an isolated facility, panic ensues as they try to escape and somehow stay awake.

The life of an unsuccessful writer is transformed by a top-secret 'smart drug' that allows him to use 100% of his brain and become a perfect version of himself. His enhanced abilities soon attract shadowy forces that threaten his new life.

A group of people are plunged into a dark, claustrophobic maze, where they must fight to survive, as the outside world watches.

A group of officers based in a labyrinthine top-secret prison must fight for their lives against Hatchet, a brilliant and infamous high-value detainee. When he escapes, his mysterious and deadly agenda has far reaching and dire consequences.

CIA Agent Bill Pope is on a mission to track down a shadowy hacker named 'The Dutchman'. When he gets mysteriously killed, an experimental procedure transfers his memories into a dangerous ex-convict. When he wakes up Pope's memories, his mission is to eliminate The Dutchman before the hacker launches ICBMs and starts World War III.

Six people, each of them is on the road to self-destruction. They wake up in cells in a surreal facility, without knowing how they got there or why.

A top secret experiment intended to produce a superhuman has gone terribly wrong. Now the creators, trapped in a remote desert outpost, are being pursued ruthlessly by their creation.

In a prison for the criminally insane, deranged anthropologist Ethan Powell is set to be examined by a bright young psychiatrist, Theo Caulder. Driven by ambition and a hunger for the truth, Caulder will eventually risk everything—even put his very life on the line—in a harrowing attempt to understand the bizarre actions of this madman.

A gifted high school student steals plutonium from the secret nuclear weapons facility in his home town in order to construct his own nuclear bomb, win a national science fair, and expose the government's secrets.

A young programmer whose job is to watch over the reality-warping Cube defies orders to rescue an innocent mother trapped in one of its rooms.

In the near future, Frank, a police officer, discovers that the legalization of all recreational drugs comes with a price.

There's a zombie outbreak after a medical trial in an international detention and medical facility on an isolated island. An ex US Special Forces/bodyguard woman inmate and a guard form a team.

A young woman, institutionalized by her abusive stepfather, retreats into a vivid fantasy world where she envisions a plan to escape. Gathering a group of fellow inmates, she embarks on a quest to collect five mystical items, blurring the lines between reality and imagination.

A group of people awaken to find themselves prisoners in a mysterious house with no means of escape. They are each outfitted with electronic devices attached to the base of their skulls. The chemicals that the brain produces when in pain are collected by the devices, and when it collects a predetermined amount, the doors will be opened. In order to escape, they must hurt themselves and each other.

An influential cheerleader finds herself held captive by a masked psychopath with a God complex. She must complete a series of sadistic social media challenges to save her life and the lives of her fellow captives. However, the masked kidnapper has a secret agenda for his most recent victim.

4 would be astronauts spend 400 days in a land locked space simulator to test the psychological effects of deep space travel but, when something goes terribly wrong and they are forced to leave the simulation, they discover that everything on earth has changed. Is this real or is the simulation on a higher level than they could have ever imagined?

In the year 2022, a ruthless prison warden has created the ultimate solution for his most troublesome and violent inmates: Absolom, a secret jungle island where prisoners are abandoned and left to die. But Marine Captain John Robbins, convicted of murdering a commanding officer, is determined to escape the island in order to reveal the truth behind his murderous actions and clear his name.

An undercover cop in a not-too-distant future becomes involved with a dangerous new drug and begins to lose his own identity as a result.

In the future, the inmates of a private underground prison are computer-controlled with cameras, dream readers, and devices that can cause pain or death. John and his illegally pregnant wife Karen are locked inside "The Fortress" but are determined to escape before the birth of their baby.

On the day of his scheduled execution, a convicted serial killer gets a psychiatric evaluation during which he claims he is a demon, and further claims that before their time is over, the psychiatrist will commit three murders of his own.

A group of career criminals finds itself trapped in a warehouse with the law – and an Attack Dog named DeNiro closing in.

Tenshu is imprisoned and sentenced to death for murdering the men who raped his girlfriend. However, he manages to survive his execution and is presented with an option: face another execution attempt or subject himself to their bizarre and dangerous experiments.

A family man convicted of killing an intruder must cope with life afterward in the violent penal system.

About to be electrocuted for a catalog of heinous crimes, the unrepentant Horace Pinker transforms into a terrifying energy source. Only young athlete Jonathan Parker, with an uncanny connection to him through bizarre dreams, can fight the powerful demon.

Maria, an unfortunate young woman, kills her rapist father in self-defense, and is later tried, sentenced, and shipped off to a woman's penitentiary where she and her fellow inmates are subjected to psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of a psychotic lesbian warden.

A young psychiatric intern unearths secrets about the mental health facility in which he works.

Ilya Goryunov has spent seven years in prison on false charges of drug trafficking. When Ilya is free he realizes that the old life that he yearned for is no more. Although he did not intend to take revenge on the man who sent him to prison, now there is no other way out.

The six-member crew of the International Space Station is tasked with studying a sample from Mars that may be the first proof of extra-terrestrial life, which proves more intelligent than ever expected.

Three stories about the world of opioids collide: a drug trafficker arranges a multi-cartel Fentanyl smuggling operation between Canada and the U.S., an architect recovering from an OxyContin addiction tracks down the truth behind her son's involvement with narcotics, and a university professor battles unexpected revelations about his research employer, a drug company with deep government influence bringing a new "non-addictive" painkiller to market.

A petty criminal fakes insanity to serve his sentence in a mental ward rather than prison. He soon finds himself as a leader to the other patients—and an enemy to the cruel, domineering nurse who runs the ward.

The Law Enforcement Technology Advancement Centre (LETAC) has developed SID version 6.7: a Sadistic, Intelligent, and Dangerous virtual reality entity which is synthesized from the personalities of more than 150 serial killers, and only one man can stop him.

After a frantic suicide attempt, Veronika awakens inside a mysterious mental asylum. Under the supervision of an unorthodox psychiatrist who specializes in controversial treatment, Veronika learns that she has only weeks to live.

One day at work, unsuccessful puppeteer Craig finds a portal into the head of actor John Malkovich. The portal soon becomes a passion for anybody who enters its mad and controlling world of overtaking another human body.

Army psychiatrist Colonel Kane is posted to a secluded gothic castle housing a military asylum. With a reserved calm, he indulges the inmates' delusions, allowing them free rein to express their fantasies.

A psychological thriller based on the concept of anamorphosis, a painting technique that manipulates the laws of perspective to create two competing images on a single canvas.

A man bumps into an old crush and becomes obsessed. After several failed attempts at winning her over, he kidnaps her and holds her captive underneath the animal shelter where he works.

A stroke of good luck turns lethal for Sam Phelan and his wife Leslie when they are faced with a life-changing decision that brings strange and sinister Pyke Kubic to their doorstep. As Pyke leads Sam and Leslie on a tumultuous adventure through the streets of Chicago, each are pulled deeper and deeper into a desperate spiral of deception and violence – all in the name of money.

Cocky researcher Sebastian Caine is working on a project to make living creatures invisible. Determined to achieve the ultimate breakthrough, Caine pushes his team to move to the next phase — using himself as the subject. The test is a success, but when the process can't be reversed and Caine seems doomed to future without flesh, he starts to turn increasingly dangerous.

A teenager stops off to see his dealer to test a new drug before heading off for a night of partying. On the way home, he picks up an injured woman, and the night takes a surreal turn.

A hardened gun-for-hire's latest mission becomes a soul-searching race to survive when he's sent into Bangladesh to rescue a drug lord's kidnapped son.

A couple agree to have their deceased son cloned under the supervision of an enigmatic doctor, but bizarre things start to happen years after his rebirth.

Keller Dover is facing every parent’s worst nightmare. His six-year-old daughter, Anna, is missing, together with her young friend, Joy, and as minutes turn to hours, panic sets in. The only lead is a dilapidated RV that had earlier been parked on their street.

People in the future live in a totalitarian society. A technician named THX 1138 lives a mundane life between work and taking a controlled consumption of drugs that the government uses to make puppets out of people. As THX is without drugs for the first time he has feelings for a woman and they start a secret relationship.

Six captive office workers are literally chained to their desks by a demented, escaped serial killer; former regional manager Thomas Reddmann. He assigns his 'human resources' the impossible task of proving his innocence or suffering gruesome consequences.

An Oxford Medical School graduate takes a position at a mental institution and soon becomes obsessed with a female mental patient, but he has no idea of a recent and horrifying staffing change.

After a bloody invasion of the BOPE in the High-Security Penitentiary Bangu 1 in Rio de Janeiro to control a rebellion of interns, the Lieutenant-Colonel Roberto Nascimento and the second in command Captain André Matias are accused by the Human Right Aids member Diogo Fraga of execution of prisoners. Matias is transferred to the corrupted Military Police and Nascimento is exonerated from the BOPE by the Governor.

While staying at an isolated island resort, James and Em are enjoying a perfect vacation of pristine beaches, exceptional staff, and soaking up the sun. But guided by the seductive and mysterious Gabi, they venture outside the resort grounds and find themselves in a culture filled with violence, hedonism, and untold horror. A tragic accident leaves them facing a zero tolerance policy for crime: either you'll be executed, or, if you’re rich enough to afford it, you can watch yourself die instead.

Kye is a prisoner of war caught between two armies that he doesn't believe in. When offered an opportunity for freedom, Kye sets out on one last rescue mission only to become stranded when his ship crash lands. Kye soon realises that the deadliest creature on the desert moon is himself.

After a man with extraordinary, and frighteningly destructive, telepathic abilities is nabbed by agents from a mysterious rogue corporation, he discovers he is far from the only possessor of such strange powers. Some of the other “scanners” have their minds set on world domination, while others are trying to stop them.

While on a prison furlough, a lowly criminal evades his guards and returns to his old stomping ground to take revenge on the people who turned him into a cold blooded killer.

"All men are not created equal. It is the purpose of the Government to make them so." This is the premise of the Showtime film adaption of Kurt Vonnegut's futuristic short story Harrison Bergeron. The film centers around a young man (Harrison) who is smarter than his peers, and is not affected by the usual "Handicapping" which is used to train all Americans so everyone is of equal intelligence.

An African American male is imprisoned and placed in solitary confinement after being found guilty of murdering his wife, as he's haunted by internal demons and his dead wife, and pushed to the breaking point by an abusive female guard.

Boozer, skirt chaser, careless father. You could create your own list of reporter Steve Everett's faults but there's no time. A San Quentin Death Row prisoner is slated to die at midnight – a man Everett has suddenly realized is innocent.

A bouncer with an anger management problem goes on a furious and resentful rampage after the murder of a friend.

A serial killer kidnaps a young boy after murdering his mother, then raises him to be his accomplice. After years in captivity, the boy must choose between escaping or following in his captor's bloody footprints.

A woman turns to prescription medication as a way of handling her anxiety concerning her husband's upcoming release from prison.

A young woman enlists in an underground game of pain endurance in the hope of winning the million dollar prize. She soon learns the real opponent is the man who's running the game, as he employs horrific methods to manipulate and defeat her.

A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged.
