The Snowman, based mostly on Jo Nesbø’s worldwide best-selling novel, ought to have been a top-notch thriller thriller. Aside from its robust supply materials, the film boasts a first-rate forged that features Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Ferguson, was helmed by acclaimed director Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), and was penned by a trio of famous screenwriters. Martin Scorsese is among the govt producers, and Scorsese’s longtime, Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker reduce the image. So, what went unsuitable? Apparently, every part.

Here’s the setup: A serial killer murders seemingly random moms in Oslo, and leaves behind not-so-scary-looking snowmen on the crime scenes as an icy calling card. He sends an ominous word to Harry Hole (Fassbender), an alcoholic detective who typically wakes up on metropolis streets or in parks after a ingesting binge, to taunt him. Why does Hole drink? Is it one thing in his previous? Perhaps an unsolved crime he can’t shake? Dunno. The filmmakers neglect to inform us, as they typically do with different key items of knowledge (like why the killer builds snowmen) which can be launched however by no means defined. Hole groups up with beginner investigator Katrine Bratt (Ferguson), who could also be hiding darkish secrets and techniques of her personal, and the 2 probe a collection of crimes that quickly prolong past Oslo and embody cold-case homicides stretching again at the least a decade. Sounds intriguing and intense, proper? Nah!

Watching The Snowman is akin to viewing second-rate crime exhibits on TV. Just spot the one one that doesn’t have to be within the story, until in fact she or he is the perpetrator, and you realize who the killer is. The identical is true right here: Midway by way of the movie, a prolonged scene happens with a secondary character that virtually screams, “He’s the killer!” It doesn’t assist that the story unspools at a glacial tempo, is slowed down by Hole’s private dilemmas together with his frisky ex-wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and sullen stepson (Michael Yates), and is populated with pointless crimson herrings. The solely actual thriller is determining the killer’s motive for the murders, which seems to be nothing greater than the truth that he didn’t get sufficient hugs and kisses as a toddler.

Fassbender and Ferguson take advantage of their underwritten roles, spouting clunky dialogue like professionals, as do Gainsbourg, Toby Jones as a sad-sack cop, and a miscast J.K. Simmons as a lusty Norwegian bigwig who likes to mattress lovely ladies. Then there’s the amateurish Chloë Sevigny—as twins!—and an much more dreadful Val Kilmer as a detective whose suicide some years earlier is known as into query. Kilmer’s garbled dialogue might be the worst instance of dubbing in a significant Hollywood film this century, and maybe past.

The Snowman’s greatest thriller isn’t who the killer is or why he’s murdering mothers. It’s this: How might a film with names like Fassbender, Alfredson, Scorsese, and Schoonmaker hooked up become one of many worst-constructed and most disappointing movies of the 12 months?