The Snowman
1. Movies are magic. They are, essentially, entire cities built on the fly, cities in which every citizen must work together toward a common goal to create something brand new out of nothing. Thousands upon thousands of moving parts operate individually, but in unison, a million little decisions adding up to a work of art that is consumed, dissected and shared by audiences across the world. It’s sort of a surprise any movie exists at all—let alone actually be good. A great movie is a miracle, cosmic kismet, though any movie can be a triumph of engineering, ambition and organization. Anyone who successfully finishes a movie: Good for you. Really.
2. These are the sort of “you did it!” thoughts that rattle through one’s brain watching The Snowman, which is as incompetently made as any studio movie in recent memory. The problem is not just that the movie is bad (though it is) or that it’s confusing (though it is), or that the movie is just humorless and self-serious and dumber than a box of rocks (though it is)—the problem isn’t even that it has a lead character named “Harry Hole” and doesn’t even seem to think that’s even slightly unusual or amusing. (Though wow, his name really is Harry Hole.) The real problem with The Snowman is that no one involved seems to understand how movies work. There is no setup, no character development, no suspense, no mystery, no suspects, no payoff. It’s almost a throwback to the early days of cinema, when early adopters were still figuring out the basics of storytelling and linear narratives, and didn’t quite have it down yet. This movie is impossible to follow, exhausting to sit through and seems to have been edited in a Cuisinart. The most impressive thing about The Snowman is that it ends.
3. Michael Fassbender, an electric actor who is so drowsy here that you want to give him an IV fluid drip, plays the aforementioned Harry Hole, a supposedly brilliant but now alcoholic detective in Norway who receives a note from someone called “The Snowman” claiming murder, or something. Hole teams up with a younger cop (Rebecca Ferguson) to try to solve the case, though it’s never entirely clear what the case we’re trying to solve is, or whether there are any clues, or what any of this is supposed to be about. There’s a fancy contraption that the killer uses to chop people’s fingers and arms off, and the killer also leaves a snowman outside the murder sites, and sometimes just outside people’s doors. Also, there is seriously a lot of snow in this movie. The snow does look great, but is still unlikely to get anyone to leave the Bahamas.