Mountainhead is not a great film, but it is a good one—especially by the standards of streaming releases in 2025. It doesn’t reach the peaks of Jesse Armstrong’s earlier work (namely Succession), but it proves he’s still one of the sharpest satirists of our time. And in a year saturated with forgettable originals from Netflix, Apple TV+, and Hulu, a messy, mean-spirited morality tale with craft and intention feels like a breath of cold, rarefied mountain air.
‘Mountainhead’ Movie Review
Mountainhead (2025), the feature directorial debut of Jesse Armstrong, is a claustrophobic, whip-smart satire that feels like a natural extension of his work on Succession—for better and worse. Though it doesn’t reach the narrative heights of his Emmy-winning HBO series, Mountainhead is a razor-sharp, dialogue-heavy chamber piece that skewers Silicon Valley arrogance and tech-world recklessness with acidic glee. With its limited scope and tight 109-minute runtime, the film sacrifices depth for momentum, but thanks to Armstrong’s signature writing style and a perfectly cast ensemble, it still manages to be a cut above your average streaming release.
Set in a secluded, snow-covered Utah mansion, the movie follows four tech moguls gathered to contain the fallout from a potential international crisis. At the center is Hugo, aka “Soups” (Jason Schwartzman), a smug self-help app entrepreneur whose fortune comes from monetizing meditation and breathwork. He’s hosting this uneasy reunion, which includes Steve Carell as Randall, a dying exec whose recent terminal diagnosis pushes him toward existential boldness; Ramy Youssef as Jeff, a reluctant AI innovator with real principles (or at least better PR instincts); and Cory Michael Smith as Venis, a ruthless social media mogul whose AI “tools” have triggered global chaos—misinformation, deepfakes, riots, death.
The comparisons to Succession are immediate and impossible to ignore. The snappy, hyper-verbal dialogue, the morally bankrupt elite in crisis mode, the icy, modernist interiors—it’s all here. But what Mountainhead lacks is breathing room. Where Succession unfolded over four luxurious seasons and allowed its toxic characters to fester and evolve, this film compresses everything into a single, frantic chamber drama. Armstrong tries to maintain his signature density of wit and detail, but in movie form, it sometimes becomes overwhelming—like binge-watching five episodes in one sitting with no pause to digest.
That said, when Mountainhead hits its rhythm, it’s blisteringly funny and bitterly effective. The film’s greatest strength is in its character specificity: Soups’ detached condescension, Randall’s veiled desperation, Jeff’s moral panic, and Venis’ power-hungry veneer all clash spectacularly. Armstrong knows exactly who these people are—avatars of real-world tech culture run amok—and he gleefully roasts them without mercy. At times, it feels like a spiritual cousin to Margin Call, less interested in whether the characters will make the right decision and more fascinated by the pathological ambition that got them here in the first place.
Jeff, portrayed with unexpected gravitas by Ramy Youssef, emerges as the quasi-moral center, the only one still blinking through the moral fog. His hesitation to hand over control of his AI software to Venis becomes the central tension, culminating in a ludicrous, near-violent attempt by the others to neutralize him. But like Succession’s Roy siblings, none of these characters are “serious people” or true killers—just frightened, self-serving people pretending they’re in control of a world they barely understand. It’s a familiar Armstrong refrain: power doesn’t make people serious; it makes them delusional.
Still, the film feels like it needed another 20 minutes—or another episode. The pace is relentless, and the third act sprints to an ambiguous, almost shrugging resolution that doesn’t fully land. Armstrong’s transition from television to film is intriguing, but you can sense the growing pains. He’s clearly more comfortable in sprawling, serialized formats, where characters can simmer. Here, the pot boils over a little too quickly.
The cast is uniformly excellent. Watching Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith, and Ramy Youssef spar in Armstrong’s fast-cut dialogue is a delight—much like watching Tom Hanks or Scarlett Johansson adapt to Wes Anderson’s rhythm in Asteroid City, or Michael Cera inhabit the stylized universe of The Phoenician Scheme. These actors fold seamlessly into Armstrong’s world, and that alone makes Mountainhead worth the watch.
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It’s not a great film, but it is a good one—especially by the standards of streaming releases in 2025. Mountainhead doesn’t reach the peaks of Armstrong’s earlier work, but it proves he’s still one of the sharpest satirists of our time. And in a year saturated with forgettable originals from Netflix, Apple TV+, and Hulu, a messy, mean-spirited morality tale with craft and intention feels like a breath of cold, rarefied mountain air.
Score: 6/10
Mountainhead (2025)
- Cast: Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith, Ramy Youssef, Hadley Robinson
- Director: Jesse Armstrong
- Genre: Comedy, Drama
- Runtime: 109 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: May 31, 2025
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