10 Movie Mysteries With Annoyingly Simple Answers

With David Fincher at the helm, a star-studded cast, and a genuinely compelling source material to pull from, it feels like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo should have been a bigger hit than it ultimately was. It unfortunately missed the mark in more than one area, including the mystery itself.

The story revolves around Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander's hunt for what happened to Harriet Vanger almost 40 years ago. It was painted as a murder mystery, and something of a locked room scenario on a much larger scale. The answer, in the movie at least, was disappointingly simple.

Though it came to a similar end as the novel, there were some key differences that unfortunately lessened the intrigue. The movie completely left out Blomkvist's sexual relationship with Cecilia Vanger, Harriet's cousin, and the fact that she was thought to be the mystery person seen in Harriet's window on the day of her disappearance. It was from here that Blomkvist realised it was Anita, not her sister Cecilia, who was involved. After following that thread, he found Harriet alive in Australia.

In the movie, this arc was condensed considerably, with Blomkvist surmising that the Anita he met was actually Harriet, still living in Sweden, far too easily. It's understandable that not every detail of the story will make it to the screen adaptation, but these were some key pieces to what made the answer so compelling that were unfortunately omitted.