Michael Fassbender has been going through a bit of a rough, cinematic patch since “Steve Jobs.” The blockbuster “X-Men: Apocalypse” wasn’t what fans were looking for, Disney pretty much gave up on the (underrated) “The Light Between Oceans,” the indie “Trespass Against Us” didn’t connect, Terrence Malick fatigue hit (the also underrated) “Song To Song,” while “Alien: Covenant” underwhelmed. Sadly, next week’s “The Snowman” continues the actor’s unfortunate streak.
The first wave of reviews have hit for the thriller and they are mostly chilly, to say the least. Despite the prestige package — which includes source material by best-selling author Jo Nesbo, and Tomas Alfredson (“Let The Right One In,” “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy“) behind the camera — it seems the story of Detective Harry Hole trying to solve a mysterious murder just doesn’t stick. Here’s what the critics had to say:
The Wrap: “In a film that revels in the gruesome nature of its deaths and the impenetrable mysteries of murder, the climactic showdown is so unimaginative it should be sent to the bottom of the screenwriting class and made to repeat the year.”
The Telegraph: “The Snowman goes wrong quickly, permanently, and in a spiral, turning into a nonsensical nightmare of Scandi-noir howlers from which you sometimes feel you may never awaken.”
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Variety: “There’s a lot happening on the surface of Alfredson’s perplexing winter wonder-why, but considerably less going on inside.”
The Hollywood Reporter: “For all its high-caliber talent mix, ‘The Snowman’ is a largely pedestrian affair, turgid and humorless in tone. The cast share zero screen chemistry, much of the dialogue feels like a clunky first draft and the wearily familiar plot is clogged with clumsy loose ends.”
The Hollywood News: ” ‘The Snowman’ is gripping, engrossing, terrifying, a story with much intrigue and overbearing foreboding – one of Jo Nesbø’s very best in his series of Harry Hole thrillers. The film version, released this week into cinemas to huge anticipation, is sadly none of those things.”
The List: ” ‘The Snowman’ is a poorly handled potboiler that telegraphs its scares, alerts even the most unobservant viewer to the identity of the killer and fritters away a cast headed by Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Ferguson.”
Den Of Geek: “…the whole production smacks of trouble behind the scenes. The opening credits list the eminent Thelma Schoonmaker as editor; a startling sight to behold, given that ‘The Snowman’’s prologue is cut together with none of her coherence or finesse. IMDb, meanwhile, lists the editor as Claire Simpson, which suggests that a changing of the guard occurred at some point. Add in the news that ‘The Snowman’ had a round of reshoots a year after its initial run of filming concluded, and there’s at least a bit of evidence that something went drastically wrong somewhere along the line.”
Screen Daily: “Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series is comprised of page-turning, airport-blockbuster Scandi crime potboilers; Alfredson scorches the seventh, ‘The Snowman,’ with such art-house intensity that it eventually melts into an exhausted puddle.”
Empire: “Many of the problems stem from the storytelling, which takes many disparate parts — two different flashback timelines, a bid to host the Winter Sports World Cup led by J.K. Simmons’ Arve Støp, and Hole’s investigation and his family life— but fails to knit them together into a cohesive whole. As a result, watching the film feels like a trudge through deep snow, and when its revelations come, they fail to make the desired impact.”
BBC Culture: “….maybe Alfredson and his team knew that the Nordic setting was all that separated their film from any other generic, post-Silence of the Lambs exploitation thriller. Take away all of the Scandi-noir signifiers – patterned woolly jumpers, Volvos, frozen fjords, and (for fans of The Bridge) lots and lots of bridges – and The Snowman melts away, leaving nothing but a puddle.
The Guardian: “It’s a serviceable, watchable thriller, with very gruesome images, coagulating around psychopathologies of father obsession and son obsession, and set in the freezing cities of Oslo and Bergen, locations that afford sweeping cityscape views that are made to look cosmopolitan and densely populated yet also weirdly remote, islanded and forbidding.”