Director Tomas Alfredson helmed a pair of outstanding films, the gripping ground-breaking Swedish vampire film LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, and TAILOR, TINKER, SOLDIER, SPY, a moody, first-rate film adaptation of John LeCarre’s brainy bestselling spy novel. So one has to wonder what on earth happened with his latest film THE SNOWMAN, a crime thriller that boasts a cast including Michael Fassbender, Charlotte Gainsbourg, J.K. Simmons, Toby Jones, Val Kilmer, and Chloe Sevigny. THE SNOWMAN is not merely bad, it is outright awful. Reportedly, even the director thinks the film is bad, expressing frustration the conditions under which it was made.
Adapted from Jo Nesbo’s novel of the same name, THE SNOWMAN focuses on Olso policeman Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) investigating the case of a missing woman who turns up links to a cold case. One thing that seems odd about this new case is the sudden appearance of a grim-faced snowman outside the missing woman’s house.
As the veteran detective and his rookie assistant Katherine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson) investigate, it quickly becomes clear that a serial killer is at work. The investigation takes them into a web of mysteries, many of which link to a powerful business leader, Arve Stop (J.K. Simmons).
Harry has a reputation as a legendary crime solver based on his past work as police detective but now he has become an alcoholic and that reputation shields him from scrutiny as he goes on one drunken bender after another. The detective’s personal life is complicated too, as he tries to maintain a relationship with the son of his ex-girlfriend Rakel (Charlotte Gainsbourg) even though he is not the boy’s real father. Oddly, Harry’s messy personal life has eerie echoes to some aspects of the cases he is investigating now.
The film starts out well enough, moody and atmospheric, teasing us that it will develope into a meaty thriller. Cinematographer Dion Beebe creates a dark, snowy world that echoes LET THE RIGHT ONE IN and there are visual parallels to TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY too. Although the story takes place in Norway, the actors all sport British accents, even the non-British cast members. The director creates an eerie, suspenseful atmosphere, and the cast do their best to round out their characters, but as the story gets more complicated, it is all for naught as nothing appears to clarify how all this connects. Until it does, when the film suddenly dive into a remarkably far-fetched, even silly ending.
The real problem seems to be a laughably bad script. At first, everything is complicated and murky, but as we wait for the fog to clear, it starts to dawn on us there will be no clarity for this story. Red herrings appear and vanish, flashbacks (including one with a bizarre Val Kilmer) pop up and dissolve without adding much useful information. While there is not a lot of on-screen violence, we do get gruesomely views of the aftermath of killings, and the killer’s penchant to replace victim’s heads with those of snow men. The film suddenly wraps up all its plot’s loose ends in a ridiculously pat and formulaic bow, an ending that is as laughable as it is unconvincing and trite. The story would be a disappointment even as the plot of a bad 70s television show.
Why Tomas Alfredson chose this story for his film, why all these stars signed on, and what went wrong during filming, are the real mysteries of THE SNOWMAN. What is not a mystery is how quickly this stinker will sink out of sight, just as couple of characters do in this snowy mess.
RATING: 1 out of 5 stars
