"Bad Filmmaking at Its ‘Finest’"
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What You Need To Know:
THE SNOWMAN is about as bland a crime thriller as possible. The convoluted storyline is confusing, incoherently jumping all over the place. Interestingly, the movie accurately depicts a culture where it’s common for people not to get married but to just choose to live with their partner, perhaps have children, and then maybe break up and move on to the next person. In reality, the family unit in Scandinavia and many other countries is falling apart. The movie depicts this reality in incredibly depressing and sad but insightful ways, whether this was intentional or not. THE SNOWMAN contains excessive disgusting violence, narrative confusion, a mixed immoral worldview, and strong foul language. It’s poorly done and ultimately abhorrent.
Content:
(PaPaPa, B, C, P, LL, VVV, S, NN, AAA, M) Very strong pagan worldview overall shows a culture that doesn’t honor the family structure as God intended, though it’s not shown in a positive light, and features lawless immoral lifestyles without any positive representations, mixed with some light biblical, redemptive, patriotic elements of police officers trying to stop a vicious killer and even acting sacrificially to save others; 14 obscenities (including a few “f” words) and three strong profanities; extreme bloody and gruesome violence includes serial killer that uses a metal wire to dismember his female victims and sometimes decapitates them and leaves their heads on snowmen, a man’s head is blown off with a shotgun in vivid detail, a man beats a woman, woman drives onto a frozen lake to kill herself, body parts are found in a freezer, a man’s fingers is cut off, and a man is stabbed with a fork; implied sex that’s borderline rape, a women straddles a man and starts kissing him, but nothing happens, and discussion of cheating; upper female nudity when a wealthy CEO at a dinner party is privately presented with a young woman, who’s briefly undressed so that the CEO can take a picture of her naked top where her breasts are briefly seen, plus some upper male nudity; heavy drinking with multiple portrayals of drunkenness; no smoking or drug use; and character says she got an abortion.
More Detail:
THE SNOWMAN is a dreary, depressing, dark crime thriller about an alcoholic police officer in Oslo, Norway trying to apprehend a serial killer who’s murdering women in despicable ways.
Detective Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) is an Oslo police detective clearly reeling from something, because he frequently gets drunk and sleeps outside in the cold on the streets, though this behavior is never really explained. Eager for a good case, Harry begins working with a newly transferred detective, Katrine, who’s working on some missing person cases.
The two detectives investigate the missing person report, but as they do, Katrine seems to be hiding knowledge that may be helpful to the case. Specifically, the fact that other missing person cases involve middle-aged women who in some way are abandoning children. Also, in each case the killer builds creepy looking snowmen that face the victim’s house. He also dismembers his victims using wires.
Harry eventually discovers Katrine’s father was a detective, who got too close to the same killer eight years before, and was murdered and framed as a suicide. Meanwhile, Harry is trying to be a halfway decent role model and father figure to his ex-girlfriend’s teenage son. As the investigation continues, the killer seems to be particularly interested in Harry’s involvement.
Will Harry catch the killer?
THE SNOWMAN is about as bland as a crime-thriller can get. Actors like Michael Fassbender, J.K. Simmons and Val Kilmer are normally terrific actors, but the director somehow wastes this talent. For example, he creates confusion by mixing the different accents of the actors, even though the movie takes place in Norway. Also, the storyline is convoluted, confusing and incoherently jumps all over the place. The opening sequence is so confusing it’s a wonder the movie even got released. Also, the main detective (played by Fassbender) is supposed to be a genius at his job, but most of the actual good detective work is done by his female partner. Finally, the movie never says why the killer has such a weird fascination with snowmen.
Interestingly, the murderer at the end reveals that his motive for the murders stems from the pain of not knowing who his father was as a child. He also had to live in an orphanage after his mother killed herself by driving her car into a frozen lake. Because of this, he decides to kill mothers who decide to have abortions, or women who are destroying their marriages by having affairs.
On a similar note, the movie accurately depicts a culture where it’s common for people not to get married, and to in fact just choose to live with their partner, maybe have children, and then maybe break up and move on to the next person. In reality, of course, the family unit in Scandinavia (and many other countries) is falling apart. The movie depicts this reality in incredibly depressing and sad but insightful ways, whether this depiction was intentional or not intentional.
THE SNOWMAN contains excessive disgusting violence, too much confusion, a mixed pagan worldview, and objectionable foul language. It’s very poorly done and ultimately abhorrent.
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