Film Review: The Girl in the Spider's Web

"Are You Not Lisbeth Salander, The Righter Of Wrongs? The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo? The Girl Who Hurts Men Who Hurt Women..?

With the rather lacklustre attempt to revitalise Stieg Larsson's "Millennium" trilogy to an American audience after the success of the Noomi Rapace starring Swedish set of movies back in 2009, the David Fincher adaptation of The Girl in the Dragon Tattoo starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig in 2011 was planned as a kickstarter for a fresh release of English speaking crime movies focusing on the intertwining lives of both journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, and vigilante hacker, Lisbeth Salander. With the subsequent Fincher movies placed on indefinite hold in the years that followed, The Girl in the Spider's Web comes to cinema with a brand new director, a new batch of actors and a script based on a novel by Swedish author, David Lagercrantz, who has subsequently continued the works of Larsson who sadly passed away before the original movies came into fruition. Directed by Fede Álvarez, famous for the rather entertaining one-two of the The Evil Dead remake and Don't Breathe, and featuring the wonderfully agile Claire Foy (First Man) in the lead role, the latest Salander-led adventure unfortunately fails to live up to the promise of the Uruguayan's previous two features, lacking the panache and darkened style which seeped through Fincher's adaptation whilst failing to offer anything new to a series which seems to have already sailed past its' sell by date. 

If remembered for anything, Larsson's writing contained subject matter which teetered on the edge of bad taste, combining sexualised violence with a brutal sense of hardened realism evidenced rather memorably in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in which Salander's rapist is punished by rather extravagant if justified means, and even with Álvarez at the helm, a filmmaker not exactly new to the world of cinematic nastiness, The Girl in the Spider's Web feels surprisingly tame as it manages to come across as a near 12A rather version of the franchise with no signature grit or substance, emphasises by a bland, overly sterile tone seeping through with no effective levels of tension or threat whatsoever. With a screenplay which centres on long lost sisters, nuclear disaster and a central hacking superhero who seems to have breathed in the James Bond effect of being completely invincible, there have been episodes of Doctor Who which have been more believable, and even with Foy in the lead role at least attempting to bring some sort gravitas to the role with the familiar funky hairstyle and stern, wet flanneled look slapped across her face, she is ultimately let down by sloppy and lazy writing which leaves her well and truly behind her predecessors in terms of overall effectiveness in her portrayal of Salander. With a brilliant supporting cast including the likes of Sylvia Hoeks and Vicky Krieps being rather wasted considering their equally memorable roles in Blade Runner 2049 and Phantom Thread respectively, their brief appearances only resulted in wishing the film would end as soon as possible in order to go and revisit those particular movies which in terms of cinematic levels of excellence, are in a different universe completely. 

Overall Score: 4/10

Film Review: Get Out

"I Want Your Eyes, Man, I Want Those Things You See Through..."

Following on from the complete and utter nonsense spouted from the mouth of Samuel L. Jackson this month regarding the use of British black actors in lead roles within predominantly American based cinematic projects, first-time director Jordan Peele attempts to divert attention from such utter drivel this week by treating us to the release of Get Out, a film of which Mr. Jackson's ill-judged comments were heavily directed towards. If being judged entirely on the merit of its' trailers, Peele's directorial debut presented itself as an entirely bonkers and mouthwateringly interesting horror, one which seemed to come across as the most surreal and OTT horror movie of the past few years. Starring Daniel Kaluuya in the leading role, an actor arguably best known for his work on Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror and Denis Villeneuve's excellent Sicario in 2015, Get Out is as wacky and relentless as it's many formats of advertisement made it out to be, a brilliantly shocking and wholly entertaining work of genre-twisting mayhem which makes you jump, laugh and squelch at the utter ripeness of its' undeniable lunacy.

Unnerved by the potential racial tensions of meeting his girlfriend's family for the first time, Kaluuya's Chris is swiftly placed at the heart of a Stepford Wives-esque community who seem a tad bit too interested in his own individual well-being and presence amidst a minority of fellow black residents who seem weirder and weirder with every passing glance. What follows for the majority of the movie is a hypnotic, both metaphorical and literal, tale of Twilight Zone magnitude weirdness which evokes a wide range of classic horror tales from John Carpenter's Halloween to the more recent splatter-fest in the form of Adam Wingard's You're Next. Mixing in a variety of effectively timed jump-scares amidst an underlying element of rib-tickling comedy, Peele's debut is an outstanding addition to a supposedly tired format, with ripe as rainbow performances form most of its' cast evoking a chilling sensibility which arches towards a Wicker Man-esque narrative, Get Out is the type of movie destined for classic cult status. The best horror movie of the year so far and by a distance one of the most interesting of recent years, Get Out is the type of movie fans of classic horror movies pray and hope for.

Overall Score: 8/10