The Snowman is released this weekend, and while it sports a quality director and leading star (Michael Fassbender), the film is getting some pretty brutal reviews. It currently sports a 15% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of this writing.
Director Tomas Alfredson, who replaced Scorsese, spoke with NRK and said:
“It happened very abruptly. Suddenly we got notice that we had the money and could start the shoot in London.. 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.”
That could probably explain why it’s getting killed over at RT:
New York Post: This adaptation is so sloggy it feels like wading through thigh-deep snowfall, stained scarlet from all the gratuitous gore.
LA Times: There’s probably a good movie or several buried in the frigid wilds of Nesbø’s fiction, and with more time and cultural nuance and fewer cooks in the kitchen, it might well be realized.
Seattle Times: The first half-hour in particular feels like there’s no plot at all, just a highlights reel of Random Norwegian Crime Films In Which Everything Is Ominous and Everyone Looks Really Cold.
National Post: The plot is a confused mess of dismembered bodies, postcard clues and go-nowhere scenes like the bunny-suited guy who is cleaning mould from Harry’s apartment building.
Chicago Daily Herald: [The Snowman] is dull, inane, humorless, suspenseless, confusing and contrived.
Vox: The Snowman does have the distinction of being so bad it’s almost worth watching, just to recalibrate your movie-viewing meter.
The Tracking Board: It adds up to what can only be described as a scorched-earth failure, a near-complete misfire that doesn’t even work on the most fundamental levels as a film.
Dread Central: [T]here’s no horror or suspense to the proceedings at all. In fact, each successive appearance of the silly snowman is just plain funny…
IGN: So cold it’s frostbitten, and all the interesting bits seem to have fallen off already.
Philadelphia Inquirer: The Snowman registers both as a bad thriller and a kind of anti-tourism ad that makes you never want to go to Oslo.
AV Club: A slow-motion car crash of a cinematic mishap featuring terrible performances from normally good actors and a bafflingly half-baked script…
With what the director said, it’s no surprise, as a film has pretty much no chance to succeed if it’s missing 15% of its script.
The Snowman hits theaters this weekend – if you dare. Although, IT is probably still playing in a few theaters, I’d just watch that again instead.