The Girl In The Spider's Web (2018) - Movie Review

Ever sit down for a test, only to realise that you somehow missed two-thirds of the study material you needed to pass it? That’s what watching this film feels like. The story is all over the place on its own merits, tantalising a battle of wits between reigning badass cyber punk Lisbeth Salander (played with a continually-wavering accent by Claire Foy) and her twin sister Camilla (played adequately by Sylvia Hoeks), only we never quite get that. What we do get is a slurry of spy shenanigans, cat-and-mouse games winding around each other, and enough missed opportunities to make one slam their head against a wall in frustration.

To make things worse, despite being billed as a sequel/minor reboot of the David Fincher version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, it relies rather heavily on material that only exists in the original Swedish trilogy of films. Since a lot of Lisbeth’s family drama fuelled a lot of the other two stories in that trilogy, and ends up informing a fair bit of the supposed main rivalry, this comes across as a rather bone-headed decision. One of many that dot this film’s cinematic landscape.

Director Fede Álvarez showed plenty of visual flair with 2016’s Don’t Breathe, and he ends up being the one thing here that doesn’t disappoint. The film looks quite nice, managing to overtake the sterility of David Fincher’s take and even the made-for-TV graininess of the Daniel Alfredson sequels, and allows for some palpable action beats. Admittedly, said beats include a scene of Lisbeth riding a motorcycle across a sheet of ice, like this was a Mission: Impossible sequel in disguise, but it still looks solid.

However, that adherence to action thrills means that this ends up jettisoning a lot of the incredibly grimy and pitch-black tone that made the Dragon Tattoo stories what they are. It maintains Lisbeth’s status as the avenger of abused women, something even Played With Fire and Hornet’s Nest somehow missed in the shuffle, and her initial scene punishing an abusive businessman looks amazing. This is Lisbeth in her purest form, a showing of simplicity and raw understanding that most of the following film somehow missed. 

Between Stephen Merchant as the first initial sign that somehow is wrong with this whole mess (“The sum of all my sins” immediately sounds like it doesn’t fit in this universe), Lakeith Stanfield as a serviceable but still tokenistic American NSA agent, Mikael Blomkvist returning for little more than name-brand recognition with how little he actually does (and played with embarrassing lack of agency at that), and a child prodigy who somehow tops everything else here in being the most out-of-place, what we get is a highly convoluted, messy and altogether unsatisfying return of one of cinema’s most incredible female heroes.