The Girl in the Spider’s Web (2018)

Unremittingly bleak, and shot in perpetual twilight, though occasionally leant grandeur by its Swedish locations, this sequel/reboot features repellent, brutal if mercifully brief episodes of extreme violence and gore but is, nevertheless — or perhaps consequently — fundamentally un-involving. It is ill-served by an androgynous, expressionless actress resembling a crash test dummy with a pageboy cut (Claire Foy, lacking Noomi Rapace’s screen presence) who rides around Stockholm on a black Ducati dodging explosions and interacting with a range of other one-dimensional ciphers straight out of Central Casting, Scandinavia — although goggle-eyed Stephen Merchant adds curiosity value as somebody in the PC world, or perhaps somebody who works at PC World — I wasn’t really paying attention — though sadly without amusing anyone, least of all me. I had been wondering how Stieg Larsson managed to continue writing stuff so long after dying — and it turns out he did not in fact write this. Would probably appeal to jacked-up teenage goth couples en route to a death metal concert or social workers with borderline disorder contemplating slitting their wrists.