The Snowman tries with all its might to follow in the footsteps of the incredible Gone Girl and unfairly-dismissed The Girl On The Train: it is a film adaptation of a best-selling crime-mystery-thriller; it aligns itself carefully for award season glory with a mid-autumn release date; and assembles a promising cast, with at least one well-loved British talent; helmed by a director with prior award-season success. It is unfortunate that, while watchable, The Snowman lets such a promising opportunity melt away in front of our very eyes.
The Snowman follows Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender), an elite but troubled crime squad detective in Oslo, who investigates the disappearance of a young mother on the first snow of winter. An elusive serial killer, nicknamed The Snowman, is feared to be rising again - and looks set to kill with every fresh snowfall. It's up to Hole and promising new recruit, Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), to track him down before he strikes again, and blood stains the snow again.
You can accredit The Snowman's disappointment to one of two variables: either, the film's source material - Norwegian author Jo Nesbo's best-selling novel - does not provide the film with a sturdy-enough foundation on which to develop the film on; or the botched page-to-screen translation, headed up Hossein Amini, Peter Straughan and Soren Sveistrup, fails to identify the elements that made the novel such a success and smartly infuse them into the screenplay. Without reading the 2007 novel, it's difficult to make an assertion either way: but my gut reaction leans towards the latter, as notable narrative deviations have supposedly been made, which disfigures the starting point completely.
The Snowman just doesn't have the momentum to keep audiences in the palm of its hand. It starts promising enough, introducing its core mystery and crime in a smart, alluring way: the sense of fear and dread looms large over the case and the tension slow begins to escalate, as the detectives sense the work of a serial killer. Early on, we see a handful of effective set pieces, genuine mystery and strong storytelling. But as we approach the finale, the story becomes increasing preposterous and lazy, taking itself far too seriously for its own good. There's little respite to the brooding mood that hangs so bleakly over the film, which becomes even more transparent as we descend into that underwhelming final stretch. It feels predictable, formulaic and rather generic, endlessly borrowing elements from more successful films and television miniseries.
While Gone Girl has comments to pass on society and The Girl on the Train made assertions about gender, The Snowman has nothing beyond surface-level additions to develop it into something better, stronger, more operational. It feels like an oddly-empty spectacle filled with unmemorable characters, despite the intriguing central concept it considers and some high-level intensity contained within the first half. Claire Simpson and Thelma Schoonmaker valiantly attempt to edit the film together effectively - but the film makes bizarre jumps, allows characters to complete fade into obscurity and ditch sub-plots when that are no longer required, as if crucial scenes went missing between the production and post-production process. Simpson and Schoonmaker can only paper over the cracks so well and their efforts, while admirable, cannot save The Snowman from melting away.
While the characters lack substance, the cast do their best with them. Fassbender plays Harry Hole (I laughed numerous times) effectively but it won't go down as a career best; his main character traits seems to be that he quite likes a drink and continual disappoints his family but lacks the backstory to expand on this. Thankfully, Fassbender is a talented man and just about brings enough likability to this once-sharp detective - it just doesn't feel particularly inspired. Rebecca Ferguson is weighty as Katrine, providing emotion and magnetism as the latest addition to the Oslo's police force. Toby Jones makes a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo and J.K. Simmons leads an interesting sub-plot that completely vanishes as his character is sidelined later in the story.
Fortunately, The Snowman possess some truly captivating imagery to keep audiences (at least visually) engaged. Directed by Tomas Alfredson, the icy landscapes of Oslo provide an excellent and rather stunning backdrop, enhanced by Dion Beebe's terrific cinematography. Its grand, chilling winter landscape cultivates the tone that begins so promising well, as does Marco Beltrami's soundtrack; it won't win awards and it feels like a copy-and-paste job at times, but it is serviceable and helps add some excitement to the otherwise to an increasingly lacklustre affair.
The best way to describe The Snowman is as follow: it is like two jigsaw puzzles were mixed into one box - a straight-forward adaptation from the author, and the director's vision, who took artistic and narrative liberties of his own. When it then came to assembling the end-product, they discovered that a handful of each puzzle's pieces were missing; because they had already committed to it, they tried to scavenge together something that bared resemblance, if only vaguely, to a complete film. As such, the final result is an imperfect, un-synced amalgamation of two competing visions that never coalesce into one satisfying whole. Scenes seem to be missing and things fail to fall into place, prompting an unsatisfying jumble and upsetting missed opportunity.
But here's the thing. Crime-thrillers are my genre when it comes to cinema, so even one that feels as scarcely passable as The Snowman will receive my time and effort - and very probably, at least some enjoyment. If you're the same, you might find The Snowman frosty but watchable; I'm hardly recommending you rush out to catch it while in cinemas but I won't be against you doing so if it encourages studios to continuing funding the genre in the future. While the immense talent on paper struggle with all their desperation to turn this choppy, flat picture into something stronger, it never really comes together in a truly satisfying manner and a film positioned as a potential year-end favourite abandons all hope by the time the credits roll after a particularly weak final act. Fine but not the hoped-for smash.
Summary: This Jo Nesbo adaptation will tide genre fans over until the next page-to-screen film translation or television miniseries - but for those after something a little more substantial, The Snowman will, disappointingly, melt away the further you head into the jumbled blizzard.
The Snowman follows Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender), an elite but troubled crime squad detective in Oslo, who investigates the disappearance of a young mother on the first snow of winter. An elusive serial killer, nicknamed The Snowman, is feared to be rising again - and looks set to kill with every fresh snowfall. It's up to Hole and promising new recruit, Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), to track him down before he strikes again, and blood stains the snow again.
You can accredit The Snowman's disappointment to one of two variables: either, the film's source material - Norwegian author Jo Nesbo's best-selling novel - does not provide the film with a sturdy-enough foundation on which to develop the film on; or the botched page-to-screen translation, headed up Hossein Amini, Peter Straughan and Soren Sveistrup, fails to identify the elements that made the novel such a success and smartly infuse them into the screenplay. Without reading the 2007 novel, it's difficult to make an assertion either way: but my gut reaction leans towards the latter, as notable narrative deviations have supposedly been made, which disfigures the starting point completely.
The Snowman just doesn't have the momentum to keep audiences in the palm of its hand. It starts promising enough, introducing its core mystery and crime in a smart, alluring way: the sense of fear and dread looms large over the case and the tension slow begins to escalate, as the detectives sense the work of a serial killer. Early on, we see a handful of effective set pieces, genuine mystery and strong storytelling. But as we approach the finale, the story becomes increasing preposterous and lazy, taking itself far too seriously for its own good. There's little respite to the brooding mood that hangs so bleakly over the film, which becomes even more transparent as we descend into that underwhelming final stretch. It feels predictable, formulaic and rather generic, endlessly borrowing elements from more successful films and television miniseries.
While Gone Girl has comments to pass on society and The Girl on the Train made assertions about gender, The Snowman has nothing beyond surface-level additions to develop it into something better, stronger, more operational. It feels like an oddly-empty spectacle filled with unmemorable characters, despite the intriguing central concept it considers and some high-level intensity contained within the first half. Claire Simpson and Thelma Schoonmaker valiantly attempt to edit the film together effectively - but the film makes bizarre jumps, allows characters to complete fade into obscurity and ditch sub-plots when that are no longer required, as if crucial scenes went missing between the production and post-production process. Simpson and Schoonmaker can only paper over the cracks so well and their efforts, while admirable, cannot save The Snowman from melting away.
While the characters lack substance, the cast do their best with them. Fassbender plays Harry Hole (I laughed numerous times) effectively but it won't go down as a career best; his main character traits seems to be that he quite likes a drink and continual disappoints his family but lacks the backstory to expand on this. Thankfully, Fassbender is a talented man and just about brings enough likability to this once-sharp detective - it just doesn't feel particularly inspired. Rebecca Ferguson is weighty as Katrine, providing emotion and magnetism as the latest addition to the Oslo's police force. Toby Jones makes a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo and J.K. Simmons leads an interesting sub-plot that completely vanishes as his character is sidelined later in the story.
The best way to describe The Snowman is as follow: it is like two jigsaw puzzles were mixed into one box - a straight-forward adaptation from the author, and the director's vision, who took artistic and narrative liberties of his own. When it then came to assembling the end-product, they discovered that a handful of each puzzle's pieces were missing; because they had already committed to it, they tried to scavenge together something that bared resemblance, if only vaguely, to a complete film. As such, the final result is an imperfect, un-synced amalgamation of two competing visions that never coalesce into one satisfying whole. Scenes seem to be missing and things fail to fall into place, prompting an unsatisfying jumble and upsetting missed opportunity.
But here's the thing. Crime-thrillers are my genre when it comes to cinema, so even one that feels as scarcely passable as The Snowman will receive my time and effort - and very probably, at least some enjoyment. If you're the same, you might find The Snowman frosty but watchable; I'm hardly recommending you rush out to catch it while in cinemas but I won't be against you doing so if it encourages studios to continuing funding the genre in the future. While the immense talent on paper struggle with all their desperation to turn this choppy, flat picture into something stronger, it never really comes together in a truly satisfying manner and a film positioned as a potential year-end favourite abandons all hope by the time the credits roll after a particularly weak final act. Fine but not the hoped-for smash.
★★★★★✬☆☆☆☆
(5.5/10)
Summary: This Jo Nesbo adaptation will tide genre fans over until the next page-to-screen film translation or television miniseries - but for those after something a little more substantial, The Snowman will, disappointingly, melt away the further you head into the jumbled blizzard.