A Beautiful Yet Unfortunately Soft Snowfall
Fantastic Thrillers are a bit of a rare treat to me as I look forward to there being a new one all the time. Thrillers like Prisoners, Zodiac and Gone Girl are all expertly done and I wish there were more of them. So when I saw the trailer for The Snowman I thought to myself that this would be the next one, this would be the next thriller to add to my collection of favourites because it’s quite difficult to impress and surprise me…I was wrong.
Now I wasn’t completely wrong, the film is still entertaining. The Snowman is based on the book by Jo Nesbo and follows the story of Harry Hole, Michael Fassbender, a drunk detective who is investigating the disappearance of a woman whose scarf is wrapped around a snowman after he got a mysterious letter about the snow and a snowman. Harry investigates the disappearance, and others with a new detective Katrine Bratt, Rebecca Fergurson, who is keeping her own secrets to herself.
It may seem like a lot to take in but it’s really not basically there is someone abducting women in Oslo, Norway, and leaving behind a Snowman at the scene. The issue isn’t necessarily with its plot it’s more that its a little obvious from close to the start who the kidnapper is. This is probably the number one issue with thrillers in modern cinema as we as the viewer are all much smarter we used to be and can easily figure these things out early on because we’re used to it and the events leading up to the surprise. The Snowman has the feeling of something that could’ve been a big secret right up until the end but at a point towards the start, you automatically go “yeah it’s that person isn’t it”. Which is obviously disappointing and leads to another hour and a half of how did they do it instead of who did it.
The benefit of the next hour and a half of your viewing time is that you get to watch a travel video for Norway as the camera is panned across beautiful fjords and mountains that look stunning and quite unbelievable. The location scout should be applauded for finding such visually striking places that have really convinced me to go to Norway. These visuals give the story a much-needed boost as you have the juxtaposition of the beautiful land against these horrible crimes that are happening. The beautiful landscape is moulded by the snow yet so is the killer’s motives.
Michael Fassbender is his usual great self and Rebecca Fergurson does a good job too but the rest of the cast is somewhat confusing. Why JK Simmons is in this as a Norwegian Businessman trying to get the Winter Olympics, called the Winter Sports World Cup in the movie which makes zero sense because it sounds like the sports are all trying to compete against each other, is beyond me. The cast is filled out with British and American actors instead of simply using actors from Norway. There is only one language in the film and that’s English and for a film that makes such great use of its surround environments, it’s crazy to think that it feels more like a light Bond film than a Norwegian thriller.
The Snowman is unfortunately not the Thriller that it’s trailers and marketing makes it look to be. With scenes that you can’t really tell how everything happens in the scene, a killer that you can guess too easily in the film and the film simply not being as elegant and extraordinary as it’s environments, The Snowman goes from that film you’d want to show your friends to just fast forwarding to show the Norwegian countryside or simply watching a travel vlog on Norway on Youtube instead. The problem is that it makes me want to go to Norway despite the idea of crazy snow related Murders that could happen.