Review of The Snowman (2017) by Sean P — 25 Dec 2017

The Snowman is directed by Tomas Alfredson, and it stars Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, and J. K. Simmons in a detective thriller about a well-known detective that is on a case about a killer that kills women and builds a snowman as a way to let them know it's that killer.

I was actually looking forward to this based on the trailers, and with a talented director, writers that know how to write, and with an A cast, I was hoping that this is really good. That is until I saw that this has horrific reviews to this, and that there were news about the director not being able to shoot 10-15% of the script left.

So when I watched the film, I understand now why this is a disaster, but it was kind of fascinating to watch. The acting is really good, especially Michael Fassbender which it's getting depressing to see him in recent films that are hated by critics, excluding Alien: Covenant which only then is mild in it.

The movie has some nice establishing shots and others, and the score by Marco Beltrami is chilling at times, which feels like the only aspect that's actually completed. Even though it's very slow, probably to the point of being boring, but I was interested to see where it's going, but in a way that makes me wonder about what horrible aspect is going to happen.

There are tons of plot elements that I know are missing here, and it doesn't do a good job of showing how Harry Mole is a great detective, let alone know what his character is other then an alcoholic.

I don't even know why the villain makes snowmen, or even what that person's motive is. Characters end up finding answers that we don't find out how from this movie, and we had sub-plots that really went nowhere, like Val Kilmer or J.

K. Simmons as they don't have much of a purpose in this film other that they're in this, although I'm not sure why Val Kilmer was even in this when he was going through health problems on his own.

The action scenes are not that great, and there's not much development to the characters that make me care about them. The Snowman is the lowest point of Tomas Alfredson and Martin Scorsese's career, but I can't blame them as the movie needed to be delayed in order for all the filming to be complete but it didn't, and this is what we get, an incomprehensible mess that the talent involved wouldn't be able to fix this.