A Reel Review: THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB

The character of Lisbeth Sandler has had a complicated history on the big screen. The chain-smoking, bisexual tattooed super-hacker got her start in Stieg Larsson’s best-selling  DRAGON TATTOO trilogy of crime novels, which were adapted for the screen in 2009 in Swedish-language versions. The character then got an American treatment in 2011, which covered the first book. Here in 2018, THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB continues her story, based on the fourth novel, which was the first not written by character-creator Larsson. 

Lisbeth (Claire Foy), is spending her time as a superhero-like avenging angel; getting revenge on abusive men by hacking their bank accounts and liberating their abused wives and children. She is hired by Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant), a former employee of the NSA to steal back his program which is capable of accessing all of the world’s nuclear codes. After a series of unfortunate events, Lisbeth is left on the run from the mysterious Spider organization who is also in pursuit of the program. 

Despite the new cast and director, SPIDER’S WEB serves as a loose sequel to the 2011 film, but thanks to a prologue which shows Lisbeth’s upbringing and establishes her hatred of abusing fathers and husbands, the film stands firmly on its own and not much homework is required going in. After the prologue, director Fede Alvarez sets up what looks like a clever heist film coupled with exciting shootouts, escapes, and chases across the country. The script however is overcomplicated with parties switching allegiances and that world-wide, all-encompassing nuclear launch program which seems like a dumb idea in the first place. There’s a lot of dullness going on, and despite the threat of the world being wiped out by nuclear war (again), the stakes can’t help but to be met with a shrug. 

Dumbness is the operative word here. To beef things up, Lisbeth is faced with her past often. Too often as every two minutes something pops up to remind her of her past. It’s way too on-the-nose way too often, and it happens so much the film becomes intolerably predictable. Action scenes are loaded with stupidity; characters get away with stuff by way of happy accidents and dumb luck. What is meant to be taken as cerebral comes off as silly and lazy. Lisbeth conveniently has safe-houses all over the country; every time she gets into trouble and loses everything she owns, she just goes to one of her hideouts and gets re-stocked. It’s another thing that happens too often and lessens the stakes for the character. 

Lisbeth the character is played cold and distant by Claire Foy. Although Foy does a fine job with the accent and does a fair amount of physical work, this version of Lisbeth is just boring. The rest of the cast are pure throwaways; fine actors all around but make no impression whatsoever. 

The third act and finale sums up the entirety of the film, as it again relies on a lot of dumb shit and repeats actions from the prologue; in fact, it becomes clear that the entire film is a repeat of that goddamn opening sequence. It’s hard to call this a disappointment because the old nuclear bomb plot could have come out of any spy novel or film in the last 60 years, so what we have here is a lot of ho-hum, who-cares, so-what, and no-matter. Spider’s web? More like Spider’s shit. 

BOTTOM LINE: Fuck it