The Snowman

WEBVTT

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Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, An Bettimore.

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I'm a producer, writer of film
and television and now a podcast producer.

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And despite having every streaming service,
I never know what to watch. So

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anytime I watch something good, I
talk about it on this show. This

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way, you'll never have the same
problem I do. I watched this tonight.

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There's always something good to watch.
Let's get started. We're doing something

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a little different today on the show. So I have done in the past

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Netflix Roulette, where I just pick
a random movie on Netflix and talk about

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it. Today we're talking about The
Snowman, which is currently the number one

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movie on Netflix. Mister police,
you could have saved her. I gave

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you all the clues you might remember
this movie from a million mem and gifts

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and whatever kind of making fun of
the Snowman that like the creepy messages with

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the Snowman drawing and jud generally the
idea of like a Snowman serial killer movie.

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I was sort of pleasantly surprised to
see it number one on Netflix.

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In a weird way, I was
like rooting for this movie even though I

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hadn't seen it. I knew it
had been critically maligned. Right it has

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six percent on Round Tomatoes, definitely
was considered a box office flop relative to

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its budget. Incredible cast like seriously
great Michael Fossbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlie

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Gainsborg, Val Kilmer, Toby Jones, Chloe Sevigner, j K. Simmons,

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director Thomas Alfredson let the right one
in Tinker Taylor's Soldier Spy executive produced

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by Martin Scorsese, as like,
could this movie possibly be not good?

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With all these talented people involved?
So I wanted to find out is it

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worth watching? Let's find out.
So the movie starts and I'll warred you

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before I get into pitres boilers.
So the movie starts with this guy coming

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to test this kid on Norwegian history
and if he gets the answer wrong,

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he hits the kid's mom, which
is so over the top that it almost

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plays Honestly, I kind of played
like comical, like I think I laughed

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like because it's so bleak, right, it just was. I don't know

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how if you watch it, I
bused to know what you think. Maybe

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I'm just sick of the head,
But to be it actually just didn't land

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right. It almost played like so
overtop became kind of funny, and the

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kids upset and he makes a snowman, and then there's an implied rape of

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his mother by this guy, and
then there's like this POV shot of the

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snowman looking through the window as if
the snowman is alive, and it's it's

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just hard to explain unless you watch
it. But this starts what is a

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very consistent issue with the movie,
which is that snowmen are intrinsically silly.

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So even though what's happening in and
around snow men in this movie is extremely

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anytime you cut to a snowman,
I'm probably gonna laugh, it's just it's

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just is a funny image contrasted with
murder, like a serial killing, right,

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which is what this movie is about. Anyway. In the opening kind

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of teaser section, the idea is
that this guy I had to look on

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Wikipedia to make sure I understood this
correctly. This guy is a cop and

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the kid that we're seeing at the
beginning is like his illegitimate child that he's

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head with this woman. The woman
is psychologically destroyed by this relationship and drives

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her car into a lake and drowns
while her son watches, and you know,

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and he does obviously he is also
psychologically destroyed. And this is all

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before the opening credits, so pretty
active first five minutes of this movie.

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We jumped to present day worth Michael
Fossbender. I think it's a natural assumption

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that he's the adult version of the
kid. That's what I assumed. There's

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a guy cleaning dry rot out of
Michael foss Spender's apartment. He doesn't know

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who that guy is, so he
shows up the apartment, sees him,

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takes out his gun and shoots at
him, and the guy doesn't seem that

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upset about it. I don't know. I think if I shot at I

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was working on my house, I
think he would be pretty pissed. He

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seemed to take it in stride.
You know, this speaks to a lot

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of the things that we're talked about
with this movie. And I'm going to

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get to what the director said,
which kind of explains this stuff. There's

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some weird stuff for this movie that
you're like, what's going on here,

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But then there's moments that peek through
of like a legitimately good movie. So,

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for example, Fosbender goes to cafeteria, moves a chair in the cafeteria

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to make sure no one sits with
him. That's a great little character detail,

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right, And then he gets the
creepy letter with the drawing of the

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snowman again in live action, right, like physically seeing it and seeing the

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camera to kind of, you know, go down until you see the little

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drawing of the snowman. It just
I don't know, it's maybe I'm just

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childish, but for whatever I cannot
take it seriously. And I wonder if

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on the page it was a lot
easier to like be wrapped up into it

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and find it scary, but when
you actually have to literalize it, it's

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just hard to take it seriously.
And here's another example. So we see

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a woman that's like walking alone to
her car, which is like classic serial

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killer set up, right, and
she gets hit by a random snowball from

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nowhere and she sort of looks out
like, oh, who threw that?

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And she sort of like smiles like, oh, someone's being playful, and

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obviously we know it's like this is
like the prelude to a murder most likely.

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Again, like it's just hard to
find that scary. Now, some

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of this might be explained by this
quote that the director tells us Alfredson gave

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to the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. According
to Yahoo UK, he said they didn't

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shoot everything that he wanted on this
it's an adaptation of a book of a

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joanesbo crime thriller. He said that
ten to fifteen percent of the script remained

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unfilmed, causing major gaps in the
story. He said, quote, our

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shoot time in Norway was way too
short and we didn't get the whole story

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with us, and when we started
cutting, we discovered that a lot was

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missing. Quote. It's like when
you're making a big jigsaw puzzle and a

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few pieces are missing, so you
don't see a whole picture. He also

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said that when they got funding,
they kind of rushed into production. He

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said, quote it happened very abruptly. Suddenly we got noticed that we had

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the money and we could start the
shoot in London. This may explain why

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it takes forty minutes to get to
this kind of father's son relationship between Fosbender

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and Oleg, who is the son
of Fosbender's character's ex girlfriend and kind of

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the only reason to care about Fosbender
now at this point I'm about forty minutes

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in the movie, we're gonna get
to kind of like the first big showy

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murder. So I guess if you
want to avoid spoilers, like this is

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a spoiler alert, although to spoil
my own review, this is going to

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be the first time in the history
of watched this tonight, I'm going to

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say, maybe don't watch this tonight. Yeah. If there's one show that

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or a movie that I would suggest
you just keep listening and probably not watch

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the film, I think it's this
one. And I'm sad to say that

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there's so many times to people involved
in this. I know how hard it

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is to make a movie period,
not much less a good movie. So

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I'm not saying any of this to
like knock the movie. I just it's

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just the reality of it. If
you watch this movie, like, there's

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a reason it's six percent of on
Tomatoes. But I do think it's a

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really interesting movie to kind of unpack. So it's almost like I've done the

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homework for you. If you were
curious about this movie, but you don't

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want to spend two hours watching it
and you want to know kind of like

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what happened, what are the merits
of it. What was the movie that

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could have been that sort of peeks
through, like I'm going to sort of

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walk you through all that and the
rest of this episode. All right,

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so you've been warned. Forty seven
minutes in Chloe seven, Yer gets decapitated

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by essentially the device in the counselor
if anybody saw that movie, it's an

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electrified wire that sort of tightens around
your head, which I have to say,

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much scarier than a snowman. And
then her killer places her body like

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and a snowman, which again just
looks a little silly. Michael Foss,

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spennor Recca Ferguson go to like check
on her, they actually had already went.

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They go back, they discover she's
a twins. Just general rule I

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would say of fiction, try to
avoid twins. You know, I think

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twins always play a little silly.
It's tough for that not to play like

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soap opera silly. I would love
to know if anyone's listening to this has

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actually read the book, because again, maybe all this stuff works great in

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a novel. I could imagine it
working in a novel much easier. Another

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example, so Foster Finder's Character's name
is Harry Hole. That's his name right

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now on the page. It's alliteration. It sort of looks nice just look

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at it visually, but if you
hear someone say it in a line of

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dialogue, it feels like a lethal
like a it feels like a naked gun

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movie, because they'll be like,
hey, is Harry Hole there? Like

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what are you making a crank call? Yeah, it's just again, it's

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what are those things? Or the
translation from the page to the screen is

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challenging. What's amazing about this movie
is like everyone is so overqualified, right

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incredibly, I mean down to the
director of photography, the editor, or

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like all the actors. I've made
a bunch of low budget films, you

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know, as a developing executive,
that were shot in like eleven days,

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twelve days, fifteen days, and
when you're making a movie on that short

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of a schedule, you're swimming uphill. First of all, just get the

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movie done, much less make it
a good movie. And it's almost watching

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this film, I was reminded of
our challenges and trying to make a movie

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and let's say twelve days right where
you're like, we're just trying to get

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this done. It's almost as if
this movie with all these stars somehow did

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not have enough time to shoot,
it doesn't make sense, like was it.

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It seems like there's like a budget
issue here or something like why did

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they not have the time they needed
to get everything that they had to get.

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It's weird, but I mean again, you can clearly see it when

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you watch the film, right.
It made me think of in twenty eleven,

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in the NFL, the Philadelphia Eagles
signed like every free agent possible,

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right, all of the coveted free
agents, and in training camp they interviewed

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Vince Young, and Vince Young said, wow, yeah, no, it's

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like we got the dream team,
and then they immediately went They started the

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season like one and four and they
finished the season eight and eight. That's

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what this movie is like. It's
like, let's get all these amazingly talented

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people together, but somehow the team
did not mesh, and it's just it's

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just kind of all over the place. But again, every once in a

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while, you see the promise of
the film. For example, Fossbender forgets

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to take Old Leg on a trip. He promised he was gonna take him

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too, and it's almost like arrested
development. Like Old legs, like standing

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somewhere with all this stuff he was
gonna take on this trip and fox Spenders

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aren't there, and and fos Spenders
ex girlfriend's new guy calls the kid and

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takes the fall for fox Spender for
the good of the kid, which is

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a very nice thing to him to
do, and just an interesting character moment

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that really worked. Again, I'm
gonna warn you spoilers because we're gonna really

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get in here. Rebecca Ferguson dies
and she's the second lead and you know,

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a pretty big name in the movie, and that was pretty ballsy.

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And then kind of like the whole
run of the end is so good that

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for a second, I'm like,
maybe this movie is good, Like it

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almost got me back in. The
extremely nice new boyfriend of Michael Fosspender's former

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lover is the Killer's He was the
kid in the beginning of the movie,

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not fos Spender. He was that
kid by having him do something for a

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fos Spender that was so nice,
so legitimately nice. I totally did not

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suspect him, and so it was
a genuine surprise when he was revealed as

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the killer, and his character motivation
actually really nicely connects with Fosbender's character.

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He was a kid who was abandoned
and so he's killing people that it has

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something to do with like abortion clinics. It's basically his attitude is like,

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you know, someone has to take
care of the children because he was not

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taken care of. So his attitude
towards Fossbender is, look, you have

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this woman who loves you. If
this little kid who looks at you is

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like father figure, why are you
abandoning them? Why can't you take responsibility?

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Which is true, he's right,
So it sort of forces Fosbender to

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like admit to his faults and it's
that all all that character stuff really works,

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and then the final confrontation between them
is gorgeously photographed on this frozen Lake

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story comes full circle. The villain, you know, false to the frozen

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lake and dies just like his mother. All that worked really well. There's

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like a good ten or fifteen minute
run at the end of this movie that's

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actually really good, so you can
see where it could have been a good

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movie. But while it has effective
elements like that, it also has kind

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of weird, random feeling stuff.
There's a very abrupt, dry humping scene

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that occurs between Fosbender and Charlie Gainsbourg. It kind of starts and stops for

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you. You're like, what is
happening here? There's a side note between

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this and Alice Darling, which I
previously reviewed on the show Dry Humping really

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making a comeback in cinema. I
feel like this movie is like, I

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wonder if David Fincher watches this movie
and tells people like, this is why

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I am the way I am,
because you know, Fincher is so obsessive

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to a crazy degree about getting every
little thing right, and it feels like

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this movie is kind of in an
opposite boat, meaning that you know,

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maybe if they got that twenty percent
more of the scripts or whatever, it

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would have been there, and maybe
if, you know, maybe if there

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was like just a more cohesive attention
to detail and the continuity of tone and

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things of that nature, you know, it could have been considerably more effective.

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All that being said, though,
I think the Snowman thing was always

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going to be funny. I don't
care, Like, there's no way you

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could tell me brutal murder. Snap
cut to Snowman with like a smiley like

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a face and arms and stuff that
you're not got to laugh. I just

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think that that was gonna be a
tough thing to overcome, no matter who

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made this movie. So yeah,
I mean apologies to everyone involved in The

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Snowman. But I guess I don't
feel too bad about this because the director

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has himself said that you know about
the movie's flaws and why they are there.

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I hate to knock any movie,
you know. I think even even

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an ineffective movie is going to have
something that's worth seeing, which is totally

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the case here. By the way, there are definitely like three to four

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like legit good sequences in this film. But yeah, I mean number one

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movie on Netflix. Yeah, I
have to be honest and say, probably

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don't watch this tonight. So this
is the first, maybe only we'll see

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if I do more Netflix Roulette,
we'll see how it goes, but only

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episodes so far, where ironically I'm
gonna say don't watch this tonight. That

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is the show for today. Thank
you so much for listening. As always,

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I want to give a little note. I got some nice um listener

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comments supporting my love for Syrianna,
so I guess I'm not alone in that,

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And yeah, I really appreciate everyone
who you know reaches out. It's

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it's great to have sort of discourse
with the listeners, so thank you for

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doing that. That is the show
for today. As always, you can

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find me on Twitter at Benimore Dan
Instagram, watch this tonight ticktime, watch

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00:15:00.759 --> 00:15:03.840
this tonight podcast. You can shoot
me an email Dan avoidchemedia dot com,

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or you can join our Facebook group. Until next time, Bye bye m M.