The Snowman

Given that the Scandi-crime genre has been a massive success over the past few years, you would have thought that taking a novel from hit Norwegian author Jo Nesbø and packing it with a top cast would have been guaranteed box-office gold. Instead, we have The Snowman. I feared, after having watched the trailer and finding it hilarious, that the film may not be as good as it should have been – my goodness, that was an understatement.

The film stars Michael Fassbender as Harry Hole, a maverick but brilliant detective (aren’t they all?). He heads out with his new partner (Rebecca Ferguson) to investigate the disappearance of a young mother, and soon suspects that a serial killer may be active in Bergen, leaving snowmen outside the houses of their victims. Hole attempts to connect the pieces, stumbling on a decades-old case that gives him some insight into the people around him and the motivations of the killer. Then, it’s a race against time to prevent the killer before they strike again.

That’s a general description of what happens in the film – I think calling it a plot would be stretching it a bit. I haven’t read the book, but I understand that half of it was just dropped right off the bat. As a result, we have a film that is simple enough to follow, but there is no logic underpinning half of what does occur. Rather than having a narrative to drive these events, it feels like we’re just watching related stuff that happens, and that noticeably makes it a dull watch.

Despite the framing and the horror chords, snowmen aren’t just scary

Another issue is this – we learn practically nothing of the killer. I shan’t ruin who it is, even though it’s fairly apparent early on – the whole point of these serial killer films is that you’re meant to spend enough time with the culprit, or at least sufficient time analysing what makes them tick, in order to make the reveal frightening or suspenseful. Think John Doe in Se7en, or Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs – the reason these films have held up is because they put in the time to make their killers threatening. All we see here is that the killer hates women (despite his backstory suggesting men would be a more obvious target) and that they like to build snowmen – despite the framing and the horror chords, snowmen aren’t just scary.

Still, it’s not as though only the killer misses out on the development front – we have a cast that, on paper, should be strong and compelling, but they are given nothing to do. J. K. Simmons stars as Obvious Red Herring, a businessman who crops up for a few scenes trying to win a major sports bid – he solicits women and does an accent, and that’s about it. Ferguson is a bright spark cop (despite such ludicrous theories as the killer is triggered by snow in a place that snows pretty much all year round), but her character devolves into clichés, her cool and excellent policing becoming emotionally-driven and worse for it. Val Kilmer also has a tough time of it – he crops up in a weird few flashbacks, looking unwell and obviously dubbed.

There are glimmers of a far better movie tucked away

Fassbender leads the cast – if you’re feeling charitable, you could describe his performance as detached. The literary Hole is often compared to Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot – this Hole is nowhere near as nuanced, with Fassbender being about as one-dimensional as you’ve ever seen him. His Hole does very little detecting, preferring to spend his time conveying practically zilch in the way of personality.

The most annoying film about how rubbish the film is is that there are glimmers of a far better movie tucked away. The opening sequence is an effective one, and some of the victim revelations – Kilmer’s firing a gun to disperse the birds, a decapitated head on a snowman – work really well. If the entirety of the film could have been built with the same deftness as these sequences, The Snowman would have been a good watch.

But instead, we’re left with a series of disparate plot threads that often lead nowhere, and a cast that have nothing to do. The Snowman hints at a sequel in its final scene but, if all the talent behind this movie can’t make it half decent, I hope we don’t see Harry Hole back on our screens any time soon.