Cinematic frostbite.

Quite honestly, if you absolutely insist on committing movie murder, the snow seems like the perfect place. As bleak as it is beautiful; a desolate, snow-laced landscape appears to hide the kind of sinister intrigue that makes it the perfect environment for the crime genre to thrive. As anyone who’s watched Fargo will attest, there are few more evocative sights in cinema than pristine white snow splattered with bright-red blood, and it’s from this simple, yet menacing, piece of imagery that a new sub-genre was born.

Dealing in death, deception, and paranoia; classic film noir made full use of darkness in order to trap its protagonist in the shadowy corners of their own psyche, while simultaneously tapping directly into our very own fear and paranoia. Replacing this darkness for light may feel like an odd move for a sombre crime thriller, but the trade-off is ultimately a simple one between two wildly differing sources of fear.

By swapping shadows for snow; death and danger no longer linger in the dark recesses of the mind, they are laid out right in front of us and made terrifyingly clear in the frozen expanse of snow. It’s an ingenious inversion of the noir rulebook; one that has informed the incredible, meteoric success of the Scandi-noir and, more specifically, author, Jo Nesbø.

As one of the most successful literary exponents of the genre, Nesbø’s writing has managed to exploit the bleak beauty of the Norwegian landscape to its full potential, adding an intriguing twist to the well-worn crime thriller, while carving out a niche within it all for himself.

With a distinctive style and an acute use of Norway’s natural environment, Nesbø’s Harry Hole series has been the author’s most fruitful work to date and, despite making his first appearance way back in 1997, it’s taken the detective an absolute age to make it to the big screen. As the seventh book in the series, The Snowman is certainly an odd place to introduce Hole to cinema audiences, but this piece of questionable decision-making is, unfortunately, only the tip of the film’s omnishambles iceberg.

Investigating the sudden disappearance of a mother on the first snow of the winter, Oslo’s premiere detective, Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender), fears that this disturbing case may signal the return of an elusive serial killer. Joined by new recruit, Katrine Bratt (Sarah Ferguson), Harry must piece together crucial information from several disparate cold cases in order to outwit the killer, dubbed ‘The Snowman’, before he strikes again. With time running out, Harry and Katrine are dragged deeper and deeper into a web of lies, death, and deceit; but will they catch their man before the next snowfall?

Ok, let’s just pause for a minute here and take a moment to consider one thing I’m sure we can all agree on – snowmen aren’t the least bit terrifying. There may be something both literally and figuratively chilling about desolate expanses of snow, but there’s no way in hell anyone can consider a carrot-nosed, coal-eyed effigy of snow least bit horrifying. Snowmen are many things, but the hook to rest a potential crime franchise on is certainly not one of them.

There are many, many things wrong with The Snowman but, digging down into the heart of the film’s problems reveals a fundamental flaw in its ability to make its central hook work in any way, shape, or form. To avoid a central premise this silly melting away into a mess of unintentional hilarity requires a level of writing The Snowman is ultimately incapable of, with the film seemingly possessing neither the scripting nous, nor the common sense, to pull the job off.

With painfully incoherent writing and horribly disjointed editing that feel like someone just threw a handful scenes against a wall to see what sticks; there’s an overwhelmingly sloppy feel to The Snowman that drags the entire thing under the ice. Absolutely smacking of indecision throughout, The Snowman possesses no idea of where it wants to go or what it wants to be; resembling a jumble of half-baked, barely comprehensible ideas that lumber blindly through a tired, cliché-ridden plot.

Dealing only in the darkest of human acts, the Scani-noir isn’t generally known for its levity but dig beneath its frozen exterior and you’ll find a dark vein of humour running through the genre. Played just right, this injection of jet-black wit, can help alleviate any over-earnestness by allowing the naturally sombre subject matter a nice counterbalance to play off. Unfortunately, like almost everything else, The Snowman fails spectacularly to balance these tones, and the result is just plain awkward.

Stuck in a barren tundra of silliness and a misguided overestimation of its own importance, The Snowman’s tone is a severely muddled one. It tries to catch that tonal balance, bless it, but my word, does it miss its target spectacularly. Clichés, stilted dialogue, and scattergun editing do nothing to make The Snowman a comfortable watch and, with neither the levity to consider itself a black comedy, nor the gravitas to pull off a psychological drama, the result is a murky puddle of pomposity and unintentional hilarity.

As the film’s script melts rapidly under the pressure, The Snowman’s only real redeeming quality comes in the form of its surroundings. Bouncing between Oslo, Bergen, and the surrounding fjords; The Snowman cuts a stunning profile, as Norway’s awe-inspiring beauty manages, against all the odds, to cut through the mess to steal what’s left of the show. For the most part, there’s precious little beauty in the film’s bumbling incompetence but, credit where credit’s due, it’s hard to deny that The Snowman looks stunning and certainly lives up to the visual style we’ve come to expect from the Scandi-noir genre.

The visuals alone aren’t nearly enough to save the day, however, as The Snowman’s sloppy and disjointed script proceeds to short-change everyone involved; not only conspiring to squander the promise of Jo Nesbø’s bestselling novel and the abundant directing skills of Tomas Alfredson, but a cast bursting at the seams with glittering British and Scandinavian talent. And Val Kilmer.

Pretentious, predictable, and laughably awkward; not one member of the cast appear convinced by the dialogue in front of them and, as they ghost from one scene to another, characters interact with a paucity of naturalism or chemistry. Systematic of The Snowman’s problems, the dialogue feels ill-conceived and poorly executed, leaving the cast visibly on the verge of tears/laughter/both throughout. If you can’t even convince the cast with your half-baked script, what chance does the audience have?

Although Rebecca Ferguson and J. K. Simmons do their utmost to add a little heat into proceedings, there’s precious little hope of anyone warming up this cold, lifeless material and, to make things worse, in a film of truly bizarre moments, the unfathomable and unrecognisable appearance of Val Kilmer really takes the biscuit. Cameos are cameos and should always be taken at face value, but there’s something so oddly off-kilter and downright awkward to Kilmer’s appearance that it only works to pull you out of the film and straight onto Wikipedia (after you’ve left the cinema, of course) to find out what on Earth happened to the guy that was once Batman.

By far the biggest disappointment, however, is Michael Fassbender who appears to give up all hope on both the material and his character early doors, before sleepwalking his way through the rest of the film. With inconsistent motivations, a back story riddled with holes, and some particularly bland writing; there appears little enthusiasm on Fassbender’s part to make any of it work, leaving his Harry Hole a major disappointment in his first movie appearance and another blot in the actor’s worryingly blotchy copybook. Between this and recent flop, Assassin’s Creed, cracks are certainly starting to appear in Fassbender’s otherwise impeccable filmography and, if the rot is to be stopped, stern words will have to be had between the star and his agent.

Despite its potential, The Snowman is one hot mess of a film. With little idea of where it’s going or how it plans to get there, the film is a bumpy and unintentionally hilarious viewing experience. Rushed, confused, and unintelligible; The Snowman works hard to waste not only its bestselling source material, but the proven talents of its cast and director with a muddled plot, slapdash editing, and a painfully inconsistent script that does no one involved any justice. Possessing none of the style, creativity, or intrigue needed to succeed in an increasingly overcrowded Scani-noir genre, The Snowman feels woefully incomplete and, while it looks stunning, there’s little else there to stop it melting away into a big, boring puddle.