The Girl In The Spider’s Web | Film Review

The first novel not written by franchise creator Stieg Larsson, The Girl in the Spider’s Web was ultimately helmed by David Lagercrantz and followed the further adventures of Lisbeth Salander. Much like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo novels, now the film series loses its previous director of the Americanized version – it originally had a Swedish adaptation with the pitch-perfect Noomi Rapace – in David Fincher, as well as leads Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. For this reboot, Fede Alvarez (the stellar Evil Dead remake, as well as Don’t Breathe) takes over from the director’s chair, and Claire Foy takes on the piercings, ink, and attitude of Lisbeth.

In the span of time since the last film, Lisbeth has adopted her rightful place of an avenging angel. Utilizing her hacking genius and formidable skills with a taser, she spends her nights righting wrongs for women everywhere. While the previous films in this series taught us the reasoning for this falls under her constant abuse within a broken system, Spider’s Web opens with an origin story of sorts. As Lisbeth makes her initial flight from an “evil man” – her abusive, sadistic father – she also leaves her sister behind. It is the type of event that completely sets up the Lisbeth we come to know, while also smacking the viewer in the head with deep-seeded levels of foreshadowing.

Lisbeth takes on a case to steal a top-secret weapons program developed by Frans Balder called “FireFall”, one which can randomly control any country’s weapons system worldwide. If it sounds very James Bond in nature, you’re on the right trail. Following this new spy-type path Lisbeth finds herself on, she recovers the program only to be double-crossed and then hunted by everyone from the NSA to the Swedish government as she fights to keep Frans and his autistic son alive. Thankfully she still has journalist Mikael Blomkvist at her beck and call to keep her ahead of the curve. Even if he has much less screen time and is now played by the far blander Swedish Ken doll, Sverrir Gudnason.

While all of the previous movies dealt with the seediest desires of the common man, this iteration looks to cast those noirish choices to the wind and instead jazz up Lisbeth with a bit of action-hero mystique. Claire Foy (The Crown) is more than up to the task. Though her Lisbeth is a bit “safer” than our previous takes on the character, it’s not due to anything out of Foy’s wheelhouse. She completely embodies every emotion and intensified reaction Lisbeth has throughout the film. She might still come in third in terms of who best played Lisbeth Salander, there has yet to be an actress who faltered in the role. The same cannot be said of Blomkvist.

What keeps Fede Alvarez’s electric action and high-octane pacing from truly clicking is the clunky script that feels stolen straight out of Pierce Brosnan’s trailer after he found out he was being recast as Bond. FireFall is such a generic and mundane device to drive the plot to exactly where you think its going, that every time it’s mentioned you have to hold your hand over your ear so your eyes won’t roll out of your skull.

The Girl in the Spider’s Web is a valiant attempt to reinvent a franchise, and almost everyone has shown up to play. Unfortunately, this James Bond meets a kinky Jason Bourne has a story so predictable you can call every beat before the opening credits roll. Claire Foy walks away knowing she crafted her own take on the iconic Lisbeth Salander, and Fede Alvarez leaves still able to excitingly set the scene. With a tighter script and deeper plotting, this could have ended up more than simply The Girl with the Treadstone Tattoo.