The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo parents guide

The thing to know: strong sex and nudity, more than an R usually carries. Beyond that, strong violence and frequent strong language.

Scare

Mildly scary

A few tense or eerie moments.

Jump scares

None noted

Gore

Graphic gore

Blood and wounds shown clearly.

Violence

Strong violence

Violence is frequent or intense.

Sex and nudity

Strong

Strong means explicit or repeated sex, extended nudity, or sexual assault shown on screen, attempted or completed, even partly off screen. Any one of these is enough.

Language

Strong

Frequent strong profanity or slurs.

How we rate: an AI reads what is known about each title and tags it 0 to 3; we check the tags against a hand-rated set and correct them by hand when readers tell us. Estimates, not a scene-by-scene review. Spot a mistake? Tell us.

Three questions

Is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo scary?

Only a little. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has a few tense moments, nothing that follows you to bed.

How gory is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

Graphic gore and strong violence. If graphic gore is a dealbreaker, skip it.

What is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo rated, and is it OK for kids?

No. It is rated R, with strong sex and nudity, strong violence, and frequent strong language.

What is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo about?

Swedish thriller based on Stieg Larsson's novel about a male journalist and a young female hacker. In the opening of the movie, Mikael Blomkvist, a middle-aged publisher for the magazine Millennium, loses a libel case brought by corrupt Swedish industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström. Nevertheless, he is hired by Henrik Vanger in order to solve a cold case, the disappearance of Vanger's niece

Cast and crew

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is on our Whodunits, Thriller on Prime Video, Mystery on Prime Video, Crime on Prime Video and AMC+ lists.

More like this feeling

Prompts we typed into CouchRot, and the lists that share its tags.

• “a thriller with a twist, no spoilers”
• “a movie that will make me cry”
• “a horror movie that's actually scary”

Lists with the same feel: Late night.