The Girl In The Spider's Web Review: 3 Ups & 6 Downs

5. The Contrived Plot & Bland Dialogue

The core narrative has never been the real strength of these movies, but The Girl in the Spider's Web touts the most insufferably formulaic plot of them all.

Centred around Lisbeth Salander's (Claire Foy) attempts to gain possession of a technological MacGuffin which could cause worldwide nuclear destruction while protecting a young boy caught in the middle - stop us if you've heard this before - the story is a laughable mess of cliches without even the basic decency to subvert itself on occasion.

The dialogue isn't much better, with heaps of lazy exposition employed to spoon-feed characters' backstories and emotional states, while lacking the witty pep of Steven Zaillian's screenplay from the Fincher movie.

It plays like a first draft script that clearly needed several more re-writes and a ton of polish before getting the green light.