I must apologize to Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Paul Dano, Isabella Rossellini, and director Johan Renck, because I will not be finishing their new Netflix film Spaceman. It’s not them, it’s me: The short version is that I am terrified of giant spiders, which makes watching a movie in which an astronaut named Jakub (Sandler) encounters an giant spider (Dano)… A challenge.
Any subscriber to Stream On (Consequence‘s weekly streaming recommendations newsletter) knows how much I love including movies and TV shows that take place in space, which was why I sat down with the Spaceman screener this week. I can’t remember if the thumbnail for the screener had an image or was just text on a grey box (as is common for pre-release Netflix screeners) — I just know that I hit play with calm anticipation, and found myself immediately engaged.
Because in those first twenty or so minutes, Spaceman featured a number of things I very much enjoyed: Isabella Rossellini plays the leader of the European space agency overseeing Adam Sandler’s space mission! Carey Mulligan is Adam Sandler’s estranged wife back home! Adam Sandler is actually playing a real character! And the movie’s ’70s Solaris aesthetic, with just a touch of Michel Gondry, was extremely promising.
Initially, there was a hint of something not just weird but spider-weird going on, after a scene with a hairy leg emerging from Jakub’s face. But I was not prepared for my first and ultimately last glimpse of Hanus, the “creature from the beginning of time lurking in the shadows of [the space] ship” (from the official Netflix description).
If I had known Spaceman featured a giant spider, to be clear, I wouldn’t have hit play in the first place. Unfortunately, while I am a professional consumer of content, I often actively avoid learning too much about some projects until I start watching them, craving the experience of a great twist or surprise whenever I can get it. And, well… I certainly got that, in this case.
I am an adult woman and professional critic and journalist of many years; I am also, like all of us, still a bit of a child deep down inside, and some specific things do make my inner child freak the hell out. Like, say, giant spiders. They aren’t my only major fear — like Indiana Jones, I’m also not a huge fan of snakes — but it’s a pretty serious thing, going back to childhood. Things might have begun with the terrifying sequence in Ralph Bakshi’s animated adaptation of The Hobbit where a bunch of Shelob’s relatives attack the poor innocent dwarves. In the third grade, I also was horrified by a copy of the magazine Zoobooks, as its cover image was an extreme close-up on a spider’s face, with the eyes.