Critics are destroying The Snowman

• Nick Spake


• 13 Oct 2017

With acting talents like Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Ferguson, not to mention acclaimed director Tomas Alfredson, The Snowman looked like one of the season’s must-see movies. Early reviews seem to suggest otherwise, however.

The adaptation of Jo Nesbø’s crime novel currently only has 21% on Rotten Tomatoes, with several critics flat-out hating it. Here are just a few highlights:

BBC.com:

“Take away all of the Scandi-noir signifiers — patterned woolly jumpers, Volvos, frozen fjords, and lots and lots of bridges — and The Snowman melts away, leaving nothing but a puddle.”

Hollywood Reporter:

“For all its high-caliber talent mix, The Snowman is a largely pedestrian affair, turgid and humorless in tone.”

indieWire:

“For all the considerable nous assembled either side of the camera, no one can rescue it from its own mediocrity: if this were the opening act of a TV miniseries, you’d be exploring other channels some time between the second and third ad breaks.”

Variety:

“A production that seems to have been second-, third- and fourth-guessed at every turn, and bears the manifold scars and stitches of on-the-fly rethinking.”

TheWrap: