The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) / YMMV

Audience-Alienating Premise: A variant: the U.S. version was a box office and critical hit, but it would have fared better if it hadn't been released on Christmas Day. It even advertised itself as "The feel-bad movie of Christmas!" While it was the biggest opener in its weekend, it's clear people preferred the safer films like Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows than an R-rated thriller with much rape and murder.
Award Snub: Rooney Mara losing the Oscar for Best Actress is seen as this. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' score for the film wasn't even nominated at the Oscars.
Awesome Music: The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for the 2011 film qualifies, not to mention the cover of Immigrant Song, performed by Karen O during the opening credits. Or the other cover, Is Your Love Strong Enough?, by Reznor's wife, Mariqueen Maandig.
Complete Monster: In the 2011 film, Gottfried Vanger is a more onscreen menace than his novel counterpart. A fanatical Nazi with an obsession for mimicking and mocking the Bible, Gottfried murdered more than 6 women in horrific ways resembling punishments from the Book of Leviticus, always subjecting them to brutal rape and torture beforehand. Be it by bashing their skulls in or raping them to death with farming tools, Gottfried perpetrated his acts with zeal, and took his own personal sadism to such a level that he sexually abused his own son and daughter, helping the former—Martin—realize his love for killing while turning the latter—Harriet—into his toy to be tortured until he finally tired of this and attempted to murder her (she killed him in self-defense).
Heartwarming Moments:
- The reunion between Henrik and Harriet is the emotional catharsis the entire film has been building to, and is delivered magnificently by Christopher Plummer.
- An understated, but nonetheless sweet moment occurs near the end of the film, when Lisbeth and Blomkvist are in a hotel room, working to find Harriet. Lisbeth is lying on the bed, working on her computer, and Blomkvist lies down beside her and very casually puts his hand up the back of her shirt. It's a lovely, casual gesture of affection, and the fact that Lisbeth (a survivor of both physical and sexual abuse) doesn't even flinch when he does it shows the trusting nature of their relationship.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Eva Green and Léa Seydoux were among the actresses considered for the role of Lisbeth, five years after the former and four years before the latter would play a Bond Girl opposite Daniel Craig.
- At one point, a character played by Christopher Plummer tells a character played by Daniel Craig that he will be investigating "thieves, misers, bullies, the most detestable collection of people that you will ever meet: my family". Eight years later, and that proved to be true in a different movie.
Moral Event Horizon: Bjurman - who is Lisbeth's legal guardian and caretaker - crosses this line when he forces her to perform oral sex in exchange for the money she needs to replace her computer. And then longjumps even farther over it when he violently sodomizes, rapes and tortures her.
Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: Stellan Skarsgård as Martin Vanger in the American adaptation.
Nausea Fuel: Blomkvist's adopted pet cat being left on his doorstep with its head missing and every limb snapped clean off, which have been arranged into a swastika.
Nightmare Fuel:
- The freaky opening titles are a magnificent achievement in Surreal Horror.
- Blomkvist being interrogated and tortured by Martin as he details his enjoyment of his decades of killings. And then plays Enya, of all things, in the background as he suffocates Mikael with a plastic bag over his head.
- The various rapes in the movie are graphically depicted and very disturbing, to the point they are almost always skipped on rewatches or are the sole reason viewers refuse to rewatch the movie.
- A cat is shown having been killed and its mutilated body displayed as a warning. There is no warning for this if you have not read the book.
Retroactive Recognition: That's Joel Kinnaman playing Erika's assistant, several years before he'd become more recognizable through RoboCop (2014), Suicide Squad (2016), and Altered Carbon.
Slow-Paced Beginning: The book gets off to a slow start, with a lot of infodumping about Blomkvist's legal troubles in a story that's supposed to be mystery. This thread doesn't get picked back up until the very end, causing Ending Fatigue. Meanwhile, the book's whole first half cuts between Blomkvist and Salander's stories seemingly at random, making it quite a relief when they finally join forces. It's likely that Larsson would have done some editing to make it flow better if he'd lived.
Spiritual Licensee: Not the entire film, but the opening credits to the 2011 American version are extremely reminiscent of the title sequence to a James Bond film, complete with surreal, sexual imagery and a dark, thrilling lyrical song. Bonus points since the American version stars Daniel Craig.
Squick: Lots of it. Most of all, the biblical serial murders and Harriet's history of being raped repeatedly by her father and brother - in fact, her brother raped her for the first time immediately after she'd murdered their father (while "his body was still floating in the water"), to boot!. Lisbeth has a bit as well, when she gets revenge on Bjurman.
Lisbeth: Was this what you used on me last week?
Tearjerker:
- Lisbeth's walk of shame after her second encounter with Bjurman.
- Harriet's history: being raped repeatedly by her father and brother. In fact, her brother starts right after she kills their father, right in front of his floating body, turning what could have been the moment where she finally broke free into a renewed nightmare.
- So Lisbeth is finally happy, as she tells her previous guardian, possibly for the first time ever, that she has just realized she's in love with Blomkvist. So she buys him a beautiful, expensive leather jacket for Christmas, goes to give it to him... only to see him arm-in-arm with his on-again, off-again lover Erika. The look on her face is heartbreaking.
- The worst part? After Lisbeth's reaction and the kick to the end credits, it plays "Is Your Love Strong Enough?" by HTDA. Sniff.

YMMV / The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

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