Movie Review: The Girl in the Spider's Web

The Girl in the Spider's Web ** / *****

Directed by: Fede Alvarez.

Written by: Jay Basu & Fede Alvarez and Steven Knight based on the book by David Lagercrantz and characters created by Stieg Larsson.

Starring: Claire Foy (Lisbeth Salander), Sylvia Hoeks (Camilla Salander), Lakeith Stanfield (Edwin Needham), Sverrir Gudnason (Mikael Blomkvist), Beau Gadsdon (Young Lisbeth Salander), Carlotta von Falkenhayn (Young Camilla Salander), Stephen Merchant (Frans Balder), Christopher Convery (August Balder), Claes Bang (Jan Holtser), Synnøve Macody Lund (Gabriela Grane), Cameron Britton (Plague), Vicky Krieps (Erika Berger), Andreja Pejic (Sofia).

The Lisbeth Salander that Stieg Larsson created is one of the most fascinating characters in recent genre fiction. She is a mess of contradictions and complexities, that cannot be easily reduced to a few traits, like most genre characters. As a character, she has already seen two excellent portrayals on film – Noomi Rapace in a trilogy of Swedish films, that were fine films even if the felt more like TV movies than cinematic – but Rapace was better than the films themselves. David Fincher than made the first in the original trilogy, and Rooney Mara was even better – securing a much deserved Oscar nomination, in a film that raised the quality over the Swedish films substantially. Yet, that was an expensive film, and didn’t make as much as the studio hoped – which is why Fincher and Mara didn’t return to complete the trilogy. But the studio didn’t want to give up on the character quite yet – which is what brings us to The Girl in the Spider’s Web – based on one of the books that the late Larsson did not write, and you can tell this isn’t quite the same character he created. The new, non-Larsson novels are fine and entertaining – but they don’t have the depth that elevated Larsson’s novels. In this movie, Claire Foy plays Lisbeth – and the filmmakers have basically decided that they need to explain her. Doing so makes her a less complex, less interesting character. And the movie, directed by Fede Alvarez, is more generic than any of the other films featuring Salander so far. Perhaps it’s just time to let the character go.

 

Most of the problems with the film are not the fault of Foy – who is a very talented actress, and from what she shows here, could very well have been a good Salander had she been in a better movie. Her Foy is more vulnerable than either Rapace or Mara played her – both of them wanted to show her hard exterior around everyone, only gradually showing any part of her inner life, and never wanting to show her emotions. Foy gets that, but the nature of the story here requires her to reveal more emotions, and more of herself than ever before. She’s quite good – the movie itself, is not.

 

In this film, Salander is in full avenging angel mode – “saving” women from abusive husbands and other men. She has principles, and stands by them. She starts to get in over her head when she agrees to take on a job for Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant), who created a computer program for the CIA – and then was promptly fired, immediately regretting the power the program provided (don’t ask me what the program does – I saw the movie two days ago, and completely forget). By getting the program back, she draws the attention of a CIA agent – Edwin Needham (Lakeith Stanfield) – a former hacker who moved to the light side (kind of) – and a figure from Salander’s past – her sister, Camilla (Sylvia Hoeks). While Lisbeth rejected her abusive father, she embraced her father’s ways – and is now bitter about it. She wants to destroy Lisbeth.

 

The film was directed by Fede Alvarez, who has two very good horror films under his belt – his brutally violent Evil Dead remake (which is very underrated) and the terrific Don’t Breathe, one of the most intense and scary mainstream horror films of the decade. That makes what he does here even more disappointing. His direction here is generic and bland. The action sequences are okay, I guess, although action sequences have never been this series’ thing – and here is a cheap way to goose the intensity that is sorely lacking in the rest of the film. Every scene in the film is either incredibly bright white – he uses the snow to blind the audience, or incredibly dark – every scene inside is in darkened rooms. His previous shows showed a ton of style – this one shows very little.

 

The plot of the movie is kind of silly – but then, the plots of these movies have always been a little silly, but here is also cheap – it wants to pull the rug out from under you a few too many times. Hoeks doesn’t really help as Salander’s sister Camilla – she looks creepy to be sure, but her delivery doesn’t help much. The film pretty much wastes Stanfield, not to mention the great Claes Bang, who was so good in The Square last year. Two of the most interesting characters from the original novels – Mikael Blomkvist (who is really the main character in the novels, but not the most interesting) and Erika Berger do show up here – but mainly because the filmmakers seem to think they’re needed. It’s very disappointing that the great Vicky Krieps, from Phantom Thread, is cast as Berger and then given nothing to do.

 

The Girl in the Spider’s Web is proof that sometimes you either need to do things right, or not do them at all. The studio didn’t want to pay for Fincher’s vision anymore and complete the trilogy – reasonable, if they felt they weren’t making enough money. But if you’re not going to do that, then it’s better to just let things go.