Every David Fincher Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

Though a decent quarter of Fincher's fans felt like he was wasting his talents re-adapting a pulpy crime thriller novel, the director improved upon the original Swedish adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with this intoxicatingly chilly re-do.

As much as Fincher and Steven Zaillian stack up a compellingly labyrinthine, generation-spanning mystery, most of the heavy lifting is done by the central two-hander between an Oscar-nominated Rooney Mara as punky heroine Lisbeth Salander and Daniel Craig as discredited journo Mikael Blomkvist.

Though it threatens to crumble under the weight of its hefty 158-minute runtime, Fincher succeeds at transforming Stieg Larsson's hit novel into one of the most lurid and repulsive $90 million movies ever made.

As one of Hollywood's all-time most probing examinations of systemic misogyny, it hits hard, no matter that it underwhelmed at the box office, ensuring no key personnel returned for the belated 2018 sequel, The Girl in the Spider's Web.

Without Fincher, Mara, or Craig, audiences didn't seem much interested in a follow-up, and it sank like a stone at the the box office.