Neither Memes Nor Mr. Police Can Save the Notorious, Clueless 2017 Flop The Snowman
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The notorious 2017 thriller The Snowman has the curious distinction of being a wildly popular and ubiquitous meme and a staggeringly unsuccessful motion picture.
The online world fell in love with the marketing for The Snowman, most notably a poster with the words, “MISTER POLICE. YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HER. I GAVE YOU ALL THE CLUES” above a crude, child-like drawing of an unhappy snowman with stick arms jutting out of its round body.
A memorable ad campaign is supposed to make you want see what is being advertised. That did not happen with The Snowman. Instead of making people want to see the sluggish mystery it instead inspired people to make their own memes.
The Snowman somehow managed to gross over forty million dollars worldwide but it was nevertheless a box-office disappointment whose many detractors include its own director, Tomas Alfredson.
Alfredson was riding high from the international success of his previous two films, 2008’s Let the Right One In and 2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy when he replaced Martin Scorsese as the director of the feature film adaptation of Jo Nesbo’s 2007 mystery, the seventh in a series devoted to detective Harry Hole.
I cannot begin to fathom what might have attracted a world-class director like Scorsese to this rubbish. Perhaps he was shown a secret screenplay for the film that didn’t suck but was tossed aside for one that did.
Scorsese stayed on as Executive Producer but I can’t imagine him flying to Norway so he could be on set every day to give advice to Alfredson.
Despite Scorsese’s presence and the studio’s desire to make a series of films about Harry Hole starring Michael Fassbender, Alfredson nevertheless complained that he did not have the money, the time or the resources to realize his creative vision and that the reason the movie doesn’t make much sense is because fifteen percent of the script wasn’t filmed.
In an interview with The Norwegian Broadcast Corporation he explained, “Our shoot time in Norway was way too short, we didn't get the whole story with us and when we started cutting we discovered that a lot was missing. It's like when you're making a big jigsaw puzzle and a few pieces are missing so you don't see the whole picture.”
Alfredson’s sleepy flop begins with a prologue in which an unnamed boy watches in horror as his abusive policeman father physically and sexually assaults his deeply traumatized mother.
The poor woman ends up dying a lonely death after her car plunges into the ice but her son survives. Unfortunately.
After a Bratz: The Movie-style time jump to the present we meet Michael Fassbender’s Harry Hole, a detective like every other. Like two-thirds of all movie detectives, he has a drinking problem and a complicated and messy love life. He’s brilliant but self-destructive. He plays by his own rules but he gets things done.
It’s a stock character Fassbender has no idea how to play except sleepily and forgettably. The Snowman isn’t just an excruciating viewing experience; I honestly had a hard time staying awake during it. The lull of sleep, sweet, blissful sleep was strong and the film’s appeal was very weak but I went ahead and finished watching this piece of shit movie anyway.
The Snowman follows Harry Hole, a name that most assuredly does not make me giggle like a schoolgirl, and his partner Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson) as they investigate a series of disappearances and murders in the icy, endless Norwegian snow.
Harry receives the taunting letter with the iconic snowman from the poster and marketing but Alfredson curiously chooses to play down what would become the film’s only memorable or popular element.
We barely get a chance to see the letters that are being sent to the police. Alfredson doesn’t linger on them. He seems understandably ashamed to have made the film version of the kind of book boring businessmen read during extended flights only way slower and more boring.
Alfredson resembles Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in that it is cold and slow and deliberate. That approach suited Alfredson’s acclaimed adaptation of the John LeCarre novel of the same name because it had substance and interiority. It was artful where The Snowman is trash that has deluded itself into thinking it’s something more.
The Snowman is not meticulous; it’s boring. So, so, so boring. There is no tension, no stakes, no rich characterization, only the usual nonsense but much, much slower and whiter.
Norway is a character in The Snowman. Usually that’s positive but here Norway is a terrible character. It’s just an endless expanse of snow full of boring people it’s hard to even keep track of, let alone care about.
It’s a testament to how deeply uninvested I was in the story, characters and setting of The Snowman that I spent most of the movie being annoyed that even though it is obviously cold as hell in Norway, where everything is covered with snow, Harry doesn’t wear a hat, a scarf or gloves. He doesn’t even zip up his flimsy coat.
I hate to sound like a Jewish mother but he’s going to catch a cold that way! And freeze to death! The chilly reception The Snowman received all but guarantees that we’ve seen the last of Harry Hole as a movie character but if they were to make a sequel to The Snowman it should be called The Snowman 2: Harry Hole Gets Pneumonia.
The other aspect of The Snowman that kept me just barely awake was the preponderance of American actors doing dodgy Norwegian accents, include Chloe Sevigny in a dual role that’s doubly thankless and J.K Simmons as a perverted bigwig and big macher in Norwegian high society.
Most distractingly a clearly sick Val Kilmer plays an intense, hard-charging detective but due to a terrible malady he was unable to speak during filming so all of his lines are very noticeably post-dubbed. It’s wonderful that Kilmer was able to secure work despite being so ill but the inherent oddness of his performance pulls you out of a movie that never sucks you in in the first place.
Why couldn’t you beautiful people have chose The Bye Bye Man instead? It’s about the Bye Bye Man! I strongly suspect that the only reason this movie was chosen was because of its poster and the meme that ensued.
The Snowman is a great meme but a terrible movie.
Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success: Failure
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