“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” Movie Trailer Review

By our guest blogger, Lita Robinson

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is the first in a trilogy of novels by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson. Apparently, Larsson originally intended to write many more than three stories in his series, but died of a sudden heart attack in 2004, having only finished three. Since then, these three have not only been published, but have become international bestsellers on a huge scale. The first film adaptation of his work will be released in the U.S. on March 19, 2010.

The trailer for "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is dark, dramatic and jam-packed with violence--cars explode left and right, someone nearly gets shot in the woods, and the eponymous girl races around a bleak-looking Sweden on her motorcycle.  She looks mysterious. The girl and an older, male journalist have been employed by a rich businessman to investigate the death of his niece 40 years earlier. The further they dig into his family’s past, the more violent secrets they discover, until they find themselves in mortal danger with an apparent serial killer on the loose.

You can’t tell too much about the film from the trailer itself--the images from the film keep getting interrupted by shots of ink and blood dissolving in water while the over-dramatic voiceover describes the success of Larsson’s novels. But if the film lives up to even a portion of the success that the novels have enjoyed, it should be satisfyingly scary. The fact that the rights to the novel weren’t bought by someone like Michael Bay makes me think this film has a good chance of being a breath of fresh air in American theaters--a thriller that actually lives up to its promise.

View the trailer for "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" below. What are your thoughts?