Girl In The Spider’s Web Is A  Dark Gloomy Formula  Story

The Girl In  The  Spider’s Web

Starring Claire Foy

Directed by Fede Alvarez

Rating:**(2 stars)

God and  the  godforsaken Crime Thriller genre move in  uncertain ways. The uncertainties  of  the plot in this unwanted excruciatingly selfconscious sequel to a film that worked three years ago because  its violence  addressed  itself to a relatableheroine and also  because it starred Bond Daniel Craig, are so widespread that  by the time we wearily reach  the shootout in an abandoned warehouse setting at the climax, we  just want some warmth and a cup  of coffee.

The  Girl In The Spider’s Web is an unbearably glum  piece  of nihilistic  cinema. Nature  is robbed of all joy and humankind is denuded of any hope. In the beginning we see two adolescent  sisters  , one of whom is  trapped  in  the clutches of her evil father while  the  other  escapes  in a  freefall that could have killed Catwoman.

Not our heroine. She   grows up with a nose ring and an attitude  to match. Calling herself  Lisbeth,Claire Foy, an actress I  immensely admired as Neil Armstrong’s  wife in the recent  bio-pic, is  grievously out of her depths in the part of a wounded abused  freelance agent.  Making it worse is  the  actress (Sylvia Hoeks) who plays  Foy’s sister.

Their confrontation at the snowcapped precipice  at the end  is maddeningly  anti-climactic with  both the actress  plunging rather than rising to  the occasion.

Then there is a little boy who knows the secret  code to crack open a  computer programme that  could destroy the world  and a journalist-friend-lover played  by  Sverrir Gudnason, a man so stupid he  repeatedly risks his life,marriage and  reputation for  Lisbeth although she is  clearly using him  for her own purposes. And  he doesn’t even  get sex in return. At least  none that we see.

For a film  brimming with  anxious energy the characters are  woefully frigid. The   action sequences are  laughable in theirselfimportance. Ten  minutes into the  tale of  digital  Gothicism Claire Foy’s Lisbeth’s  home blows up.She  jumps  into the bathtub and  is saved.

We couldn’t hope for a  safer world.

The  setting is  mostly the snowcapped wilderness that claims to be Stockholm.So far Sweden was always  the land of rhapsodic  joy , the land  of ABBA’s songs for me.

That just changed.  Do  us a favour. Leave  the  girl with the golden tattoo caught in  a spider’s web(etc, etc)   to her own devices. She  is  really not  interesting enough for us to invest two hours  of  our time as she cracks some complicated code on her  computer . Not when Ralph is breaking the internet.