The Girl In The Spider's Web: Film Review

The Girl In The Spider's Web: Film Review

Cast: Claire Foy, Sylvia Hoeks, Lakeith Stanfield, Stephen Merchant, Vicky Krieps, Sverrir Gudnason
Director: Fede Alvarez

The Millennium Trilogy was, to be frank, a sensation.

Dark, dingy, Scandi-noir that hooked audiences, the Noomi Rapace/ Michael Nyqvist combo sustained three films and millions of book sales. The subsequent reimagining with Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara fell short, even if it embraced some of the darkness and intense nastiness which percolated through the first.

And now, from the director of Don't Breathe, the book not written by Stieg Larsson has made it to the big screen, with The Crown star Claire Foy taking the lead role of hacker Lisbeth Salander.

Yet, The Girl In The Spider's Web all feels so formulaic, and largely unexciting.

The story concerns Salander who's contacted by Stephen Merchant's Frans Balder to retrieve a defence programme he's written. Salander does, but then finds herself unexpectedly under attack from others who want it, and framed for crimes she didn't commit.

Racing against time to clear her name, and stop the end of the world, Salander discovers the conspiracy has a very familial feel to it...

The problems with The Girl In The Spider's Web are largely not those connected with the execution of the film, which deploys some clever twists and starkly nasty imagery with veritable aplomb.

And the problem doesn't lie on the shoulders of a relatively emotionless Foy, who largely turns Salander into a scowling, scornful, brooding superhero type, in a performance which dials down the restraint, ups the physicality from Foy and leaves an impressive feel.

The main issue with The Girl In The Spider's Web is the story itself - it seems so out of keeping with what the original trilogy aimed for.

When Salander first appears, it's like she's cosplaying Oliver McQueen from Arrow, and the script demands an avenging angel like performance as the righter of wrongs, catapulting Salander into the echelons of damaged superheroes. And while Alvarez does much with jerky camera movements and handheld rushes to complement a sense of suspense at the start, he soon abandons for formulaic thriller territory.

The Girl In The Spider's Web still has some nightmarish edges, and while the emotional touches at the end come down to a short scene involving two people on a snowy ledge, there's little to let the light in throughout.

Stanfield is terribly and woefully underused as an American agent chasing the missing program; and in much similar ways, journalist Mikael Blomkvist is sidelined as the story goes on, robbing the film of the central spiky partnership that was such a tenet of the original series.

If all of this feels like The Girl In The Spider's Web is being damned, it's pertinent to say it's still a competent thriller, even if it's one constrained in a narrative web of its own doing.

It's just compared to the original films, and source material, no matter what Alvarez and Foy do, it's not enough to lift it from the gloom that pervades throughout - both of atmosphere and of oh-so-familiar pulp plot which lacks the sophistication and lyrical poetry of the first three.