Monsters, what monsters? (Spoilers)

I saw the first movie, ‘The girl With The Dragon Tattoo’ last week, and was blown away by it.
I eagerly anticipated this follow up, which I saw last night, and was hugely disappointed.
I haven’t read the books.
For starters, this was supposed to be a story about prostitution and trafficking. Where was the prostitution? Where was the trafficking? There’s no point in vaguely alluding to their evils, without showing any of it on screen. Movies are a visual medium. It needn’t be graphic, just a couple of scenes, a potential prostitute being taken from her home and transported, or whatever. Something to tug at the senses.

Secondly, the monsters I referred to in the header. Where were they?
In the first movie, we had seemingly normal people doing evil deeds (the parole officer being a prime example). What we get this time around are a group of almost laughable caricatures.
I mean, when was the last time you’ve seen Hells Angel bikers as baddies?
Twenty, thirty years ago? And incompetent to boot.
The half brother was straight out of Frankenstein’s monster. I half expected him to don a top hat at some stage, and burst into ‘Putting On The Ritz’, a la the Mel Brooks version.
While the father was a throw back to ‘The Elephant Man’.
There was no latent evil in any of these characters.
Whereas, in the first movie, I wanted the parole officer to suffer for his sadistic cruelty, I couldn’t be bothered one way or the other with these cartoon characters.

Finally, the plot holes.
I mean, would you put a loaded gun on the table, turn your back and walk out on such a monster as the parole officer. Would it not occur that maybe, just maybe, he might jump out of bed as she walks away, and empty the magazine into her back?
Would it not occur to her father to ‘finish her off with a head shot’, just to be sure?
He reckoned he shot her three times. One, he knew, hit her in the leg. The other two could have hit her anywhere. You’d think such an evil assassin would do his job properly.
And the burial. With a couple of ton of soil on top of her, she’d suffocate in a matter of minutes.
Her arms would be immobilised with the weight, and it would be totally impossible to dig herself out with a mobile phone, or whatever.

After seeing the first one, I so wanted to like this movie. Unfortunately, I couldn’t.
I thought it was a pretty average, maybe even poor, thriller, complete with the obligatory (mediocre by today’s standards) car chase, the lesbian scene included for ‘shock’ value, and the totally uninteresting cardboard ‘baddies’. As I stated, I haven’t read the novels, but if the movie is true to the book, I get the impression the second was just hastily cobbled together to capitalise on the success of the first.
I still plan on watching the third instalment, hoping it will knit the whole series together a bit better, but will be approaching it with far less anticipation than I did for this.