The Girl in the Spider’s Web *** (2018, Claire Foy, Sverrir Gudnason, Lakeith Stanfield, Stephen Merchant, Christopher Convery, Beau Gadsdon, Carlotta von Falkenhayn) – Movie Review

The 2018 New Dragon Tattoo Story, Uruguay director Fede Alvarez’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web, is a brisk, capable and coldly efficient noir-style action crime thriller, but it is also uber-dark, gruelling and deeply unpleasant, and none too credible either. Occasionally, and weirdly, it runs like a female-led Bond or Bourne film, with its plot about a web of spies, cyber-criminals and corrupt government officials, and its various action, chase and combat sequences, so none too credible.

It should be very exciting, but somehow it is not, because it just isn’t very involving, partly because the plot is none too credible and partly because the lead character, and most of the others, are so alienating. However, it is tense and intense, and ultra-busy with its myriad of incidents and multi-layered plotlines, so the two hours go racing dynamically along.

Stockport, England-born Claire Foy takes over as tattooed Swedish motor-cycling cyber-punk lesbian computer hacker Lisbeth Salander and makes a good job of it, looking supremely fit, capable, grim and haunted at all times. There are not many laughs in Foy’s performance, and none in the film either. It is a grown-up affair, where the grown-ups haven’t grown up nice. With its abuse and revenge themes, it has a depressingly unpleasant view of humanity. It is funny, Stockholm and the Swedish seem such nice people in real life, leading to a further credibility gap.

Lisbeth Salander is a mix of Jason Bourne, Batman and Paul Kersey in Death Wish – ingenious computer wiz action hero spy, masked avenger by night and vigilante with a personal vengeance mission. There are several very unpleasant aspects to all this, but she is definitely presented as a heroine, rather than an antihero, we are meant to sympathise with her, approve of her, believe in her, and, for a while at least, be her. This is quite hard when she is so extreme, is physically and mentally capable beyond any normal female human, and does things that are virtually impossible.

It is OK that she is an action hero or a cyber wiz, but hard to believe that she could be both. Though she lives on her wits, she seems to be living very well. But then, this is Sweden. It is good that they haven’t finally ducked out of the Swedish setting and transferred the story to Pittsburgh and good that they have kept Lisbeth’s lesbian leanings – though in one scene only – when both Sweden and lesbians are possibly puzzling to mainstream American audiences.

Sverrir Gudnason plays the series’s other man character, Swedish journalist Mikael Blomkvist, but his role is distinctly subsidiary this time, so there is not much he can do because there is not much for him to do, and that is a shame. The whole aspect of his investigative magazine is downplayed to being hardly there, except in the background or the past.

Stephen Merchant and Christopher Convery play the key father and son team that have the all-important computer password, the film’s MacGuffin, but it is Sylvia Hoeks who has the film’s second most showy and interesting role as Lisbeth’s abused and vicious sister Camilla. Hoeks cuts quite the evil arch-villain figure. With both sisters being men haters, for particular reasons we see in the prologue, the film’s anti-men aroma is very strong once again, but that is apparently the Salander appeal.

The Girl in the Spider’s Web is a semi-horror film, so it was a good idea to hire a capable horror director. The talented Alvarez directed Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe, and he certainly knows what he’s doing in terms of pace, atmosphere and tension. Though he uses too much CGI, he has a good eye for a striking location and an eye-catching shot, and gets the best from his cinematographer and score composer. He has probably made around the best film possible of this material.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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