Who doesn’t love an awful movie—especially now that some movie theaters serve liquor? You can fill up on enough wine to make you forget that you paid actual money to see something absolutely abysmal like The Snowman, the latest thriller from Swedish director Tomas Alfredson. You might know him from films that are actually good, like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Let the Right One In. The Snowman is bad. But somehow, it’s so extraordinarily bad that I am obsessed with it. I’m fascinated by it.
Should you see The Snowman? Yes.
Have you seen the dumb ads with Trump-like handwriting scrawled on them? “Mister police, you could have saved her. I gave you all the clues.” By the way, there are no fucking clues. This movie makes no sense and you’d drive yourself insane trying to figure out what it’s about. Did you know Michael Fassbender plays a detective named Harry Hole? Did you know that some Hollywood executive didn’t change that name because they’re somehow unaware of the juvenile laughing it elicits? Did you know Val Kilmer is in this movie?! And he’s somehow more insane in it than when he’s being pervy about Cate Blanchett on Twitter?
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Should you see The Snowman? Maybe.
Did you know that Martin Scorsese was supposed to direct this dumb movie? Scorsese was just sitting around his house in 2013 and someone was like, “Yo Marty, why don’t you follow up The Wolf of Wall Street with this stupid movie about a serial killer that loves snowmen? You like Frosty the Snowman and shit, don’t you?!” Scorsese was probably all, “I’m not bothering Leonardo DiCaprio with that crap. But I’m totally gonna make a boring priest movie with Andrew Garfield. He’ll do anything. He’s doing a Mel Gibson movie.”
Do you know that after Scorsese dropped out, Alfredson didn’t even film the entire movie? He told the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, “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 happened very abruptly, suddenly we got notice that we had the money and could start the shoot in London. 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.”
Who in their right mind literally comes out and says, yo, we didn’t even film the entire script but, uh, here it is! I mean, release it as a web series then? How do you do a bunch of reshoots and not go, “Hmmmmmmmmmmm, let’s finish that script tho?” Splice in some of Fassbender’s sex scenes from Shame?
Should you see The Snowman? Um… if you want.
If you need a good laugh, there’s nothing better than seeing a serial killer put a snowman’s head on their murder victims. The audience was cracking up—and I was cracking up more than anyone else because as I said, you can only watch this film if you’ve been drinking. The staging of the deaths is awful. Fassbender is somehow awful. The directing is so pedestrianly ‘90s that you almost think Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd are about to step in and solve the crimes themselves.
Should you see The Snowman? If you have nothing better to do.
Critics tore the movie apart because it’s horrible. Rebecca Ferguson was probably wandering around in the snow like, “Can I get back to the set of Mission: Impossible? I’d rather listen to Tom Cruise talk about some damn Scientology nonsense than pretend like this Jack Frost shit is going to be scary.” Or maybe she thought it would be another insanely bad and campy film like The Girl on the Train? But this isn’t The Girl on the Train. Emily Blunt isn’t drunk-dancing in the park or throwing hors d’oeuvres at Lisa Kudrow. Fassbender doesn’t even have the decency to give you some man candy like Justin Theroux in The Girl on the Train. Actually, why did I spend my money on The Snowman? I still haven’t even seen Blade Runner 2049.
Should you see The Snowman? Hell no.
