THE SNOWMAN (2017)

Studio:       Universal Pictures
Director:    Tomas Alfredson
Writer:       Peter Straughan, Hossein Amini, Soren Sveistrup
Producer:  Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Piodor Gustafsson, Robyn Slovo
Stars:     Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Toby Jones, Val Kilmer, J.K. Simmons, Chloe Sevigny, Sofia Helin, Genevieve O’Reilly

Review Score:

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Summary:

An alcoholic detective connects a series of cold cases to a new string of murders where a snowman is left at each crime scene.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

As a boy, Mathias learns that his abusive uncle, adulterous police detective Jonas Lund-Helgesen, is actually his father after spying the man having sex with his mother. Jonas leaves hurriedly. Mathias’ mother feverishly pursues Jonas with Mathias in her car’s passenger seat. Despondent over the scandalous situation, Mathias’ mother goes catatonic and drives onto a frozen lake. Mathias escapes, but his mother allows herself to sink with the car and drown when the ice breaks.

Oslo police DCI Gunnar Hagen admonishes alcoholic detective Harry Hole for missing work again due to drunkenness, but helps Harry concoct a cover story. Harry receives an ominous letter from ‘The Snowman Killer’ threatening to murder a mother.

The Snowman stalks Birte Becker to her home, where he creates a snowman to face the house, and abducts her after Birte’s husband Filip leaves. A neighbor reports Birte’s disappearance the next day after noticing the Beckers’ daughter Josephine playing in the yard alone.

Harry meets new investigator Katrine Bratt and they begin looking into Birte Becker’s disappearance. While Katrine interviews the neighbor, Harry rifles through related files in Katrine’s car and finds a folder on the case of Laila Aasen.

City of Bergen – 9 Years Earlier – Frederik Aasen turns to disgraced detective Gert Rafto to look into his wife Laila’s disappearance. Frederik presents his suspicion that his wife may have been having an affair with businessman Arve Stop and Stop may have gotten her pregnant. Rafto later ignores directions from his superior Svenson and examines the crime scene where a dismembered woman was found.

Harry talks to Josephine and learns that her father Filip was upset about something. Josephine adds that she didn’t build the snowman out front. Harry questions Filip some time later.

Katrine shows Harry another case file as they make connections between missing persons who were all unhappily married with children and also disappeared during a snowfall.

Harry meets his ex-girlfriend Rakel Fauke at a hockey game played by her son Oleg, who doesn’t know his father’s identity yet continues looking up to Harry as a father figure. Harry and Rakel are joined by her current boyfriend Mathias, who is now a doctor using his father’s last name Lund-Helgesen. After later taking the boy to a concert for his birthday, Harry promises to accompany Oleg on a father-son camping trip through his school.

Katrine informs Harry that police received a call that chicken farmer Sylvia Ottersen went missing and her husband specifically requested Harry to investigate. Katrine and Harry go to the Ottersen farm and find Sylvia safe in her barn, confused as to why someone would call in a false missing persons report about her. After Katrine and Harry leave, the Snowman murders Sylvia.

A short time later, Katrine and Harry receive a second call identifying Sylvia as missing. They race back to the farm and find Sylvia’s decapitated head atop a snowman. Sylvia’s twin sister Ane Pedersen admits that Sylvia recently aborted a child that did not belong to her husband.

Arve Stop holds a gala to promote his bid to bring the Winter Sports World Cup to Oslo. At the event, Harry shows the Snowman letter to Hagen, who approves Harry’s request to recruit a special investigative unit. Katrine, who has been privately investigating the two men for some time, spies Dr. Idar Vetlesen bringing a woman to Stop, confirming Vetlesen’s side operation as a sex trafficker.

Harry returns home and kicks an intrusive mold removal man out of his apartment. However, the man is revealed to be the Snowman in disguise.

Harry connects that several of the missing or dead women have Dr. Idar Vetlesen in common. Harry and Katrine go to question the doctor, but Vetlesen closes up when Katrine becomes hostile. Harry’s tech contact later downloads the secretly-shot cellphone video of Vetlesen meeting with Stop at the gala.

Harry travels to Bergen to dig deeper into the Gert Rafto file. On the train, Harry runs into Mathias, who reminds Harry that he forgot to accompany Oleg on his camping trip as promised. However, Mathias covers for Harry by calling Oleg and telling him he forgot to relay a previous message that Harry cancelled.

In Bergen, Harry meets with Frederik Aasen, who does not recognize Vetlesen as the doctor his wife was seeing. Harry next goes to see DCI Svenson, who reiterates the official story that Rafto’s violent death was a suicide. A flashback shows the Snowman killing Rafto and staging the scene to look as though Rafto blew off his own head with a shotgun. Harry searches Rafto’s home and finds an old book that reveals Katrine is actually Rafto’s daughter, and had been secretly following this case because of how personal it is to her.

Rebecca from Telenor Security calls Katrine with an alert that Birte Becker’s phone is currently active inside Vetlesen’s address. Katrine breaks into the house and eventually finds Birte Becker beheaded along with another woman. Vetlesen is also discovered dead from another apparent shotgun suicide.

Harry learns from Gunnar that Katrine was suspended for not reporting the phone activation and for entering Vetlesen’s home alone. Harry confronts Katrine about her father.

Rakel comes to Harry’s apartment and tells him that Oleg briefly ran away because of her plans to move away with Mathias. Harry questions if that is what Rakel really wants. Harry and Rakel nearly have sex. Rakel leaves upset after discovering Harry has a pharmaceutical prescription from Mathias.

Posing as a socialite, Katrine goes to see Arve Stop at another gala and gets invited to his room. While alone, Katrine plants a computer and a gun in hopes of incriminating Stop. However, the Snowman kills Katrine.

Harry finds Katrine’s body left for him in a car outside his office. The last file on Katrine’s computer shows a separate interview with Filip Becker in which he says something inconsistent about his wife’s doctor.

Harry questions Filip Becker again. Filip confesses that while trying to get pregnant in hopes of saving their marriage, he discovered he was infertile, which revealed Josephine wasn’t his biological daughter. Filip further reveals that outside of Dr. Vetlesen, he and Birte sought a specialist consultation with Dr. Mathias Lund-Helgesen.

Realizing Mathias is the Snowman, Harry calls Rakel to warn her, but she does not answer. Mathias captures Rakel and then abducts Oleg as well. At Mathias’ home, Harry finds files confirming Mathias’ involvement in the other murders.

Harry tracks Mathias to Mathias’ childhood home. On the way, Harry learns from investigative team member Magnus Skarre about Mathias’ troubled parentage, and that Jonas Lund-Helgesen was also the detective assigned to investigate the disappearance of Mathias’ mother.

Harry confronts Mathias inside the house with Rakel and Oleg held captive. The two men have a tense confrontation as Mathias tortures Rakel. It is confirmed that Mathias’ childhood trauma triggered him to kill in cases where children did not know their fathers’ true identities.

Harry and Mathias fight. Mathias escapes outside. Harry pursues Mathias to the frozen lake. Mathias shoots Harry, who falls to the ground. Mathias approaches Harry to deliver a kill shot, but Mathias falls through the ice and drowns.

Harry returns to the house to rescue Rakel and Oleg. Some time later, Harry volunteers to take on a new case.

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Review:

Whatever word of mouth you may have heard about “The Snowman” has likely been overwhelmingly negative.  Scanning several ‘Top Critic’ blurbs on Rotten Tomatoes, where the tepid thriller holds only an 8% Fresh rating, one can find such unflatteringly insulting descriptions as “soul-deadening,” “inept misfire … entrancing train wreck,” and “muddled mess.”

Should you acknowledge this intangible equivalent of a ‘No Trespassing’ sign yet choose to go into the film anyway, you’re likely to skeptically wonder, as I did, “can it really be that bad?”  In a word, yes.  “The Snowman" really is that bad.

Norwegian detective Harry Hole (a vacant Michael Fassbender in his most unrewarding role yet) has one of those functioning alcohol addictions where his beleaguered superior would love to can Harry’s ass for going MIA due to yet another bender.  Unfortunately he can’t, because Harry is of course too brilliant of an investigator to dismiss, forcing his superior to cover for him with an exasperated sigh instead.

Selfish and irresponsible, Harry also can’t maintain a real family, although he does play chronically unreliable father figure to his ex-girlfriend’s adoring son Oleg.  When Harry promises to take the boy on a school camping trip, swearing he won’t screw it up this time, you wonder why the film even bothers with a subsequent scene of the bus leaving Oleg alone with slumped shoulders, since you’ve already envisioned this inevitable outcome in your mind.  If only Harry was on the eve of retirement too, he could complete the Triple Crown of clichéd cop characterizations.

Harry is on the case of ‘The Snowman,’ a mysterious murderer whose victims are women married with children.  Their deaths or disappearances coincide with days of fresh snowfall, and are accompanied by the appearance of a plain-faced snowman at each crime scene.  Why the Frosty motif?  We never find that out exactly, which is only one of innumerable unanswered questions regarding a script so tattered, the movie has no other option but to bare every problematic bone.

“The Snowman” can hardly be considered a serial killer thriller, since hiding his/her identity prevents the killer from ever becoming a featured character.  Fresh murders are few and far between too, with Harry and his new partner Katrine spending more time thumbing through cold cases looking for connective clues.  As a result, “The Snowman” becomes a research-heavy police procedural, and an uneventfully slow one at that.

If you’ve heard anything else about “The Snowman” aside from its dismal reviews, it was probably director Tomas Alfredson bemoaning to any interviewer who would listen that 15% of the script didn’t get shot during principal photography.  This fact naturally goes a long way toward explaining why the movie feels like a patchwork quilt of unnecessary side characters, unresolved subplots, and an amnesiac main arc desperate to make some sort of narrative sense.  What this doesn’t explain is why the 85% of what was filmed includes so much footage of Michael Fassbender walking, smoking, carrying grocery bags or inserts of cable car pulleys and other useless B-roll filling up a nearly two-hour runtime.

I genuinely believe the following.  “The Snowman” should be taught in film schools as an easy example of poor pacing.  An early sequence puts us alongside an impending victim as she travels home with ominous headlights behind her, checks her phone several times, argues with her husband, putters about some more, and eventually vanishes off camera.  Such scenes barely hint at suspense and they certainly don’t tie us closer to the character or teach us much about her.  Absent of rhythmic tension, the audience is unable to engage when unenergetic activity is predominately passive.

Every beige thread ends in boredom, if they go anywhere at all.  Romantic heat possibly intended to bloom between Harry and Katrine never sees a single spark.  Harry’s pseudo-love triangle with his ex and her new beau presents little passion, particularly in one of the limpest sex scenes ever depicted in a major motion picture.  Years from now, no one will remember that notable actors like Toby Jones or J.K. Simmons are in the movie, misspent in inconsequential roles any no-name could play.

Whatever filmic adaptation of Jo Nesbo’s acclaimed novel was originally envisioned clearly didn’t come anywhere close to making it onscreen.  Whether that comes down to pre-production problems involving several swaps of creative hands, production oversights that didn’t film what was needed, or post-production editing that couldn’t satisfactorily salvage what material did make it doesn’t matter.  The end result remains the same, which is that there is no way to categorize “The Snowman” except as a disastrously disfigured disappointment.

Review Score:  25

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