'The Snowman' Viciously Murders Its Own Potential

Movie adaptations of popular novels almost always result in a love or hate response from audiences, which is usually dependent on their familiarity with the source material. With The Snowman, however, there isn't much room for question: this movie about a winter season serial killer stinks worse than hot garbage in summer.

The story (adapted from the popular novel by Norwegian author Jo Nesbø) follows detective Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender), a Norwegian detective working in Oslo. Harry's self-destructive cycle of alcoholism is interrupted by the arrival of Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), a young investigator from Bergen who comes to Oslo investigating a string of missing persons cases that might be connected to murders stretching back decades. At every crime scene there is a snowman - the same kind that Harry receives in personal letters from the killer. As Harry follows the clues, it quickly becomes clear that all is not what it seems with the case; Bratt is clearly hiding something, and at every turn, the killer proves to be one step ahead of the investigators, even taunting them. And all the while, more and more snowmen keep getting made, with fresh victims to accompany them.

On paper, The Snowman has a lot of promising elements: an ensemble of quality actors, a best-selling mystery novel as its backbone, and an acclaimed director in Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). However, it's clear from the very first frames of the film that The Snowman got lost somewhere in production, and woefully squandered all the potential it came with.

On a directorial level, The Snowman is one of the worst staged, shot, and edited films of the last few years. The visual composition is aggravatingly bad in its POV and angles, and the cinematography by Oscar-winner Dion Beebe (Memoirs of a Geisha) looks haggardly unpolished and ugly. All in all, The Snowman looks like it was composed by a C-grade film school student, and is completely unworthy of its theatrical venue.

Worse yet, the script by Peter Straughan, Hossein Amini, and
Søren Sveistrup is a complete butchery of Nesbø's convoluted narrative. The Snowman tells a confusing muddled story, throwing plot elements at the viewer with little to no explanation (visually or narratively). It becomes clear by the third act that the writers and editors never covered the full events of the novel - not even critical plot points that are introduced, developed, and ultimately discarded, as the movie swaps the final twists and revelations of the book for an awkwardly truncated ending.

Michael Fassbender tries to carry the film on his acclaimed shoulders, and admittedly handles his end well. Rebbeca Ferguson's character is largely a confusing mystery that never really gets straightened out, and other acclaimed actors like J.K. Simmons (Justice League), Toby Jones (Captain America), Chloë Sevigny (Big Love) and James D'Arcy (Agent Carter) are totally wasted.

The most bizarre aspect of The Snowman is a bit role from Val Kilmer as Gert Rafto, the Bergen detective who initially got close to catching The Snowman killer, many years before. Kilmer looks downright bad, with swollen jowls and a dialogue track that sounds like it had to be re-dubbed to cover whatever horrible mumbling accent he attempted. If anything, this film makes the case for why Kilmer should consider gracefully bowing out of the business.

In the end, The Snowman is a complete misfire. Don't pay to see it in theaters, don't even spend the $1 on a future Redbox - maybe even save yourself the time of when it hits Netflix in a few months. There's literally nothing to see here.

The Snowman is now playing in theaters. It is 1 hour 59 minutes long and is Rated R for grisly images, violence, some language, sexuality and brief nudity.