Detective Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) is one of Norway’s most famous detectives. Nowadays he’s more well known as being a drunk. You are more likely to find him passed out on a street than seeing him behind his desk working a case. That is until he gets a missing person’s case where it turns out a serial killer is on the loose. The killer’s MO is to decapitate his victims and put their heads on top of snowmen. He better solve the case soon or the next victims can be the ones he loves.
This is one of those movies whose trailer makes it look like you will see an edge of your seat thriller that will keep you guessing to the very end. It looked like it could be a good cat and mouse plot, but the preview is terribly misleading. Instead we wind up with a two-hour mess with a mystery we can’t get invested in and characters we don’t care about. One cardinal sin you can commit when making a “Whodunnit” type of story is having the audience uninterested in the answer.
When you make a story like The Snowman you need to put together a very good flow to how everything unfolds. Not only was everything painfully slow moving, but even when the story gets something going it feels very choppy. As if you might start to get involved in what’s going on and then a sudden halt happens. If a thriller does its job you may hear a gasp come from the audience now and then. You will probably, more likely, hear the people near you sigh out loud many times and you will wind up too.
We also end up with a waste of a lot of great talent. Besides Michael Fassbender, the cast includes Oscar winner J.K. Simmons, Rebecca Ferguson and was directed by Tomas Alfredson who has directed such fares like Let the Right One Inand Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He knows how to deliver thrills and tension, but fails to do so this time out. One sad moment occurs during a chase scene where real exciting music is used to build up the scene, but you will remain unmoved for the duration of the scene. There are much better movies to see. Heck, watching a snowman melt would be more entertaining.
1/2 tiara