The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo returns in The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy) is hired by former NSA employee Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant) to steal a program called Firefall, which can access the world’s nuclear missiles. Soon after completing the heist, Lisbeth’s apartment is ambushed by a group of men who steal her laptop with the program. Enlisting the help of her journalist friend Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason), Lisbeth sets out to recover the stolen program, especially after discovering her long thought dead estranged sister Camilla (Sylvia Hoeks) is behind the crime.
Federico Álvarez (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) directs this film based on the fourth book of the Millennium series of novels written by David Lagercrantz, taking over for the late Stieg Larsson. The Girl in the Spider’s Web is technically a sequel to David Fincher’s 2011 English-language adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, though Claire Foy (The Queen, First Man) and Sverrir Gudnason (Borg vs. McEnroe) take over from Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig in the lead roles of Lisbeth Salander and
Mikael Blomkvist.
The events of The Girl in the Spider’s Web takes place three years after Blomkvist last saw Lisbeth, with the latter keeping a low profile, emerging only to commit vigilante justice against men who hurt women. However, Lisbeth needs Blomkvist’s help when a criminal group known as The Spider’s steal a dangerous program known as Firefall and frame Lisbeth for the crime. On top of this, NSA operative Edwin Needham (LaKeith Stanfield) has arrived in Stockholm to try and recover Firefall. Lisbeth soon discovers that it is her sister Camilla behind the crime, having taken over their father’s criminal empire.
The road to The Girl in the Spider’s Web is actually a quite tangled one. The original Millennium Trilogy of books written by Stieg Larsson was originally adapted as three films in its native Sweden, starring Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander, in a role that would to success for Rapace in North America. In 2011, an English remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was released, directed by David Fincher and starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig. In 2015, a fourth book in the series was released written by David Lagercrantz and for some reason Sony decided it to make The Girl in the Spider’s Web, instead of adapting the second book The Girl Who Played with Fire.
As such, it’s not that surprising that The Girl in the Spider’s Web is a bit of a mess. This is a film that not only retcons David Fincher’s film, but is an adaptation of a story that chronologically takes place after The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, which may confuse viewers who only previously saw the David Fincher film. Claire Foy does a fine enough job as Lisbeth Salander, though she is still the least memorable of the three actresses who played her. On the other hand, Sverrir Gudnason is noticeably quite younger than the previous two actors who played Mikael Blomkvist, which really changes the dynamic between the character as Lisbeth.
Altogether, while The Girl in the Spider’s Web is not a terrible film, it is still a rather uninspired one.