Film Review: The Snowman (2017)
The Snowman is one of the most baffling movies I’ve ever seen. With a cast and crew as stacked as it has, one would expect at least mediocrity. It’s one thing to have a bad outing – it happens to even the best in the business – but somehow The Snowman defies even the worst expectations. It’s as if everyone involved – top to bottom – made a pact to make the worst movie of the century so far, and then got really drunk while they were making it. I kid you not, in the time since my viewing and the writing of this review, The Snowman’s Rotten Tomatoes score has dropped by two points – from 9% to 7%. Need I say more?
I’ll say a little more. There is perhaps only one redeeming quality about The Snowman: It would be perfect for RiffTrax or Mystery Science Theater 3000. When your film is tailor-made for a goofball and some robots to make fun of, you’ve got issues a-plenty. I’ll start with the obvious. The main character (played by Michael Fassbender) is named Harry Hole. Intended Scandinavian pronunciation aside (the film is set in Norway), that name sounds like someone lost a bet. Here I am once again – need I say more?
Yes! Two words: Val Kilmer. Now, his scenes are very, very weird, but it isn’t Kilmer’s fault. Turns out he had complications arise due to a recent throat cancer operation, which forced the crew to shoot around his dialogue. He’s rarely seen speaking on camera, and when he is it’s dubbed – really badly. It’s unfortunate about his medical condition during the filming, but anyone in the business with even the slightest amount of competence should have seen that the workaround they came up with was totally unacceptable. How those scenes – as they are – made it into the final cut are beyond me. It’s astonishing. But there’s more.
The plot? You asked for it. Harry Hole is a detective of staggering genius. His exploits are even studied at the police academy, it seems. When he’s paired with the young and brilliant Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson) on a missing persons case, one clue leads to another and we’re off to the races. Trouble is, the race makes no sense and the clues never add up. Before you know it, some heads are blown off with shotguns while some are decapitated and placed on snowmen – leaving our heads confused and irritable. There’s also a large portion of the film dedicated to how terrible a person Detective Harry Hole is (I just like saying that). He’s a drunk, you see, which interferes with his genius status (actually, there’s no evidence of any kind presented to back up the genius claim, so mostly he’s just a drunken asshole of a cop). Long story short, the story is terrible, and you’d be better off knocking back a few of your own with some friends while practicing your MST3K impressions (I call Joel).
Who the killer turns out to be is completely inconsequential. I would say that what matters is the journey, but in this case, the journey doesn’t matter either. I was hoping when J.K. Simmons finally showed up (as Norwegian businessman Arve Støp) there’d be a little class added to the proceedings, but I was dead wrong. Overall, I love director Tomas Alfredson’s films (Let the Right One In and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy are great examples of genre transcendence) but The Snowman nearly deflates the achievements of those very good films. Quite frankly, this film should never have seen the light of day.
