Review of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2009) by Al D — 31 Mar 2013

Going for more psychological thrills than psychical thrills this is easily the best in the trilogy and the only one I'd deem particularly worth-watching even though the first two would obviously have to be watched in order for this to make much sense.

The first one was bad, the second one just wasn't good and this one is decent. The storyline finally reaches a level of complexity that's engaging and the outcome is not predictable like in the first instalment. It's still deeply flawed though with it's static nature and urge to be simplistic when dealing with very complex topics. The performances are all stale at this point too with Lisbeth's character becoming nothing more than a typical stroppy teenager who is grounded throughout the whole movie and Bomkvist's strong composure becoming more dull than anything else.

The story is vastly improved though and, while it differs greatly from the previous two instalments, I don't think that's a bad thing. The issue is not that's it's different- it's that it's no where near smart enough to pull off the new feel as it was to pull off the old style in the previous films. Also, as others have noted, the irony in the title is a fair sum-up of this film- apparently kicking the hornets nest means sitting in a room, typing on a mobile for a while.

For me, it's the strongest in a very weak trilogy and is only worth watching solely because it has the benefit of two previous films being fairly bad but also providing good elements for this one to expand on. in all, it's still a massive disappointment that so little was done with such interesting, albeit limited, source material.