It was a December evening I’ll never forget: Dark and gloomy, the kind made all the gloomier by a draining shift at a dead-end retail job. The holiday season was fast approaching — and despite my love for Christmas, I didn’t feel much like celebrating. Instead of a feel-good Christmas classic, I found myself craving a different kind of film. I wanted The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
The 2011 film, directed by David Fincher, should not be anyone’s first choice for a holiday comfort watch. It was literally touted as the “Feel-Bad Movie of Christmas” in its cheeky ad campaigns, and its subject matter honored that brief to the letter. I can vividly remember the queasy feeling I was left with on my first watch, as expert hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) and slightly yuppie journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) entangled themselves in a stomach-churning murder mystery. Their misadventure is trademark Fincher: grimy, gruesome, and downright depressing. I never thought I’d have the constitution to see it again; until that dark and gloomy December evening, it felt like the only thing qualified to cheer me up.
