The Girl in the Spider’s Web review – Scandi thriller is a little too noir

This glum crime franchise, unfolding against a backdrop of blighted concrete chill and semi-derelict industrial spaces, is evolving into Scandinavia’s anti-hygge. Nothing cosy or welcoming here, just mankind wallowing in its worst impulses and human connections snuffed out like discarded cigarettes.

This latest film, adapted from David Lagercrantz’s follow-up to the late Stieg Larsson’s Millennium novel trilogy, has yet another actor inhabiting the leathers and scowl of uber-hacker Lisbeth Salander. Claire Foy steps into the motorcycle boots of Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara and finds them ill-fitting.

Much as I admire her, Foy is miscast here. She’s just too empathetic for a role that requires an almost reptilian lack of emotion; too relatable for a character who needs to be weirdly alien in her responses. Add to this a preposterous plot that weaves together a piece of world-threatening software with the spectre of some pretty dark childhood secrets and you have a glowering downer of a movie.