The Snowman

Some spoilers: Inspired by Douglas and Gilmour93's unconventional defenses of the film, where the director himself admitted that it had no beginning, middle, or end because there was ultimately nothing to use to piece the film together, I also picked up the thrown gauntlet of alternative readings of this jumbled mess and came up with the idea that actually the only thing in the film that's real is the last scene. The rest is a glimpse into a perspective on Detective Harry Hole's past, warped by years of alcoholism and exhaustion, that superimposes disjointed, surreal scenes of his previous cases and burned-out relationships on top of each other. Right when he can just barely reach specific occurrences in his memory, he disappears right before he can touch them under the ice of an irreparably damaged mind. Postmodernism lives even if it doesn't want to, and old Lynch is somewhere in the back, nodding approvingly over his cigarette. PS: it still looks better than a lot of other adaptations of Nordic mysteries, though, and Alfredson's handling of space, camera work, and (wherever the wind keeps him from tripping over his own feet) dynamics is exemplary. But unfortunately, you simply can't turn a concentration camp into a bouncy castle by simply redoing a few barbed wires. (01/03/2018)

This movie once again confirms that transferring a quality book onto the big screen is not so easy. At first glance, everything seemed pretty good. The cast with the lead Michael Fassbender is great. The man in the director’s seat is adequately Nordic. What else could you ask for? If only the screenplay was a bit more logical. This way I pretty much  watched this film without much interest, even though there was a number of really interesting actors. For example, Val Kilmer, whom I have not seen for a thousand years and I will not need to see him for another thousand years. Or J. K. Simmons, who was possibly just a decoration in the movie as I cannot recall him doing anything at all. Well, he actually did do something, he was taking creepy pictures of women on his phone and consequently the screenwriter did not even explain why. And that was the same with everything, the schmuck. It is crazy that the main character Harry Hole, played by Michael Fassbender, seems like he just had a lobotomy, so it feels like he isn’t investigating at all, plus, what is even worse, you way too often realize that he does not speak at all. The cynical bastard Hole, whom all the people who’ve read the book love for the endless bullshit he says, utters at maximum two sentences in a row in the film. How could that make me like him? And the investigation? Just tell me, all of you who haven’t read the book, what was Val Kilmer doing there at all? Or why were the murders committed? Was it obvious from that conclusion? I didn’t feel that way. Overall, a terribly badly filmed crime film that was meant to tell the best story of Harry Hole and, in my opinion, killed the whole series. I haven’t been as pissed off for a long time as I was in the case of this movie. One of the worst crime movies I’ve ever seen. If it weren’t for the beautiful Norwegian locations, I would have left the cinema in the middle of the screening like the Czech film critic Mirka Spáčilová. (10/12/2017)

The adaptation of Jo Nesbø's The Snowman definitely had more potential. I haven't read the book, but it was certainly more interesting than this bland detective story with mediocre visuals and a bored Michael Fassbender. These cold Nordic serial killer thrillers are usually top notch, here the Americans must have interfered a lot in the film, otherwise I can't really explain the failure. The murders are almost non-existent, so forget about the blood, the atmosphere is not very good and the only thing that surprises is the identity of the killer, which I didn't figure out. It is watchable, but the film lacks any WOW effect, which is a shame. The best scene from the trailer doesn’t even appear in the film. 55% (12/14/2017)

Boring, transparent, playing on the horrible psychology of the characters. But anyone who doesn't know Hole could care less because you don't see into him, you just know that he must be drinking and must have been living with someone and being a dad to someone, but he wasn't very good at it. He probably liked them, they probably liked him. But he screwed up sometimes. Probably the drinking. And then there's the killer. He's got a problem, too, but on the other hand, he's a genius because he can commit murder and build snowmen undetected. This adaptation was a waste of time. I haven't read the source material, but it’s been a long time since I’ve see such a boring movie. (01/16/2018)

If, during a snow-covered and frosty winter evening, you feel like you’d like to watch a thriller with a suitable atmosphere, go for anything except The Snowman. Watching completely unlikable heroes for two hours groping their way along the killer's trail in the midst of such a lacking plot would still be bearable if The Snowman did not have a scattered and incomprehensible storyline - the characters emerge and disappear again, confusing the audience, although despite the frankly erratic investigation it does not mean you could not have already figured out who the killer was from the start. Then there’s the ending, which is so chaotically edited you can’t possibly know what the hell is going on. It's hard to say where it all went so wrong. Tomas Alfredson, a once-promising director, probably got buried in the snow sometime during the past few years. (02/15/2021)