by Eric Blume
There aren’t words in the English language which can adequately describe how terrible The Snowman is. Talented director Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) has let the press know that “10-15% of the screenplay” was never shot during principal photography, which certainly explains why nothing in the movie makes a shred of sense.
The film might be about a detective (Michael Fassbender) who is partnering but not partnering with another detective (Rebecca Ferguson) to track someone who may or may not be a serial killer, the identity of whom may or may not be traced back to a prologue which is undeniably heavy-handed and portentous...
Along the way, we get one confusing scene a piece with Chloe Sevigny, Toby James, and J.K. Simmons. We also get a few disconnected flashback scenes with an unrecognizable Val Kilmer. [the actor has recently confirmed that he had been battling cancer]
The Snowman is the kind of movie that doesn’t even adhere to the basic language of film storytelling: we cut from Fassbender seeing a flashback that doesn’t include him or even include characters connected to him. One is never quite sure of who the characters are, or their relationship to each other. The killer leaves a snowman with a coffee bean face at the site where he murders, and eventually the cutaways to these snowmen set the entire audience into a fit of the giggles.
There’s a small window two-thirds of the way through the film where the awfulness almost becomes fun. Could the movie actually keep geting worse, you might think with delight. But then it does, and instead of it being enjoyable, it's just more depressing. There’s a boatload of talent associated with this film, Frankensteining it together out of desperation, and desperation is never fun.
Please skip The Snowman, whether in the theater, in airplanes, or years from now on television. I am a Fassbender Completist, and felt I couldn’t miss my man playing a character literally named Harry Hole. But experiencing Fassy’s Harry Hole was a shockingly joyless venture.
Grade: G (is that worse than an F?)