When watching a creepy crime mystery, there's a general expectation that you want to be able to play along. You want to uncover and solve the clues at the same time as the protagonist of this story. This movie does not really let you do that, which then becomes a frustrating mess of an experience seeing this story play out on screen. I'm sure it can be argued that the clues are being revealed to us since the first opening scene, but the way the narrative is being told here definitely does not help.
I don't know why Tomas Alfredson directed the movie the way he did, but he really didn't do us any favors. Maybe the original novel that this is an adaptation of, was too complicated of a story to be put on film. Maybe it should have been done differently, or as a multi-episode series, because wow was this a slog of a movie. The way this film tells it's story, it's like it's purposefully being cryptic, obtuse, and inexplicable, just for the sake of wanting to confuse us.
I get that it's a mystery and all, but stringing us along through this mess of a narrative just felt obnoxious. There were moments when I was complaining about the movie having too much exposition. Then there were moments when I was complaining that there simply wasn't enough exposition. There were scenes that knew how to build up tension, with proper pacing, and good editing. Then there were scenes that didn't show any restraints, moved by too quickly, and was edited haphazardly. It was all just so infuriating to put up with this movie yanking our chain.
Even the talents of Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, were generally wasted on this movie. Fassbender's character at least had some sort of proper character growth as the main protagonist, but the characters of Ferguson and Gainsbourg just felt like they were making things up as the story goes. There were actually a lot of other characters that were important to the overall story, but the movie sure as heck made me not care about what happens to them.
"The Snowman" should have been more compelling than it actually is. Such a huge disappointment. At least the visuals and cinematography were great, but not enough to truly recommend this film.
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