This film is literally unfinished. According to the director, about 15% of the screenplay was not filmed. And it shows. The editors probably tried their best to turn this into a coherent film, but they definitely did not succeed. This is one of the worst edited movies I've seen.

I will say this however, this movie can be really damnfunny. There were so many scenes where I was laughing my ass off.

When Harry Hole (yes, that's his name) sees the shape of a snowman drawn on the car roof, the completely random uses of Popcorn Song, when the camera moves around that random snowman to reveal that it's actually a "scary" snowman... comedy gold! In that sense, I really enjoyed this terrible, awful, really not good movie.

First of all, this movie looked and sounded great. Amazing cinematography and good atmospheric score (yet a little loud sometimes, should've been more subtle). The performances were ok for the most part, but it seems like nobody really cared enough to be remembered. I'm not sure though if Fassbender was playing an insomniac or he was just too bored to convey an emotion.

I can't tell for sure, but I think that the adaptation itself is what ruined it for me. I didn't read the book, but at times it feels too obvious that some parts were copied directly. It may be the book's fault, but some of the characters really lacked depth. It is usually easy to distinguish characters in scripts written for the screen and characters transcended from a book (these were pretty much a set of cliches, drunk/depressed cops, revenge fueled motivations etc. This doesn't feel deep enough. You need to have deep characters in a thriller these days.

The pacing/editing was clunky. Introductory scenes were really fast and cut in a somewhat confusing way. It's like if the movie is briefly filling you in on the premise. Since the introductory scenes are a mess it's really hard to establish an attitude towards the killer in the end. Then they throw a lot of characters and subplots at you, some of which disappear and reappear very randomly making you forget they were in the movie. It's not that slow or long, but it sure feels dragged out. I first checked time around 40 min in, and it's not a good thing for me when I do that. The twist was absolutely readable around 50% into the movie. I was nowhere near being even slightly surprised.

The ending, even though looking great, still felt lame. This is a result of a kind of confusing tone of some scenes. Some of them feel like unintentional comedy (or clever intentional one?). Like the mom drowning in a car doing a face you do when you meet the neighbor you don't know to well in an elevator. It also feels like the ending was re-written in a way, since the killer had no reason to move to the lake, he had a gun and if he wanted he could've killed them in the house or drive away. Even if he had other motivation the movie still doesn't tell us what is was.

It also had some weird stuff. Like casting a very odd (and old) looking Val Kilmer and dubbing his voice in a very unnatural way (badly lip-synched too).

'The Snowman' had so much going for it. The Norwegian setting (Norway has some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe),a brilliant book, a great cast (usually can't go much wrong with Michael Fassbender and JK Simmons),the involvement of 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' director Tomas Alfredson and one of the best premises of the year.

Sadly, what was one of the year's films with the greatest potential and what should have been one of the best if done right turned out to be one of 2017's most disappointing and worst films. Have seen enough films this year, a hit and miss year with films on both sides of the good and bad spectrum and other in between efforts, to feel this way, before this opinion is attacked. Not in a long time has a film with so much potential start so promisingly, with one of the creepiest first 10 minutes of the year, have that potential completely melted after the opening and become increasingly buried under the snow as much as 'The Snowman'. The waste of a great premise, book, cast, opening sequence and director is unforgivable.

Good things first. As said, 'The Snowman' gets off to a very promising start. The first ten minutes is genuinely creepy and atmospheric. The other redeeming quality is most of the production values, the photography is slick and stylish and makes affectionate use of beautiful and suitably chilly settings.

Can say nothing good about everything else however. As an adaptation of the book, 'The Snowman' completely cuts the flesh off the bones, leaving only the bare bones of the story and characters. What was so great about the source material is removed here and executed in a way that's the complete opposite. However, any adaptation deserves to be judged on its own terms and unfortunately 'The Snowman' fails as a standalone, to me even it's even more of a failure in this regard.

With a great cast on paper, 'The Snowman' should have had great performances. In reality, the performances are all round awful, even from those who are usually good or more, and sees some career-worst work from some. Michael Fassbender is a complete blank in a role he should have excelled in, it's a kind of role he's perfect at so it was a shock to see him so bad. Rebecca Ferguson is especially poor in a role that would be beneath any actress regardless of the extent of their acting ability. The chemistry between the actors, especially Fassbender and Ferguson, is frostbitten. There are also some very inconsistent accents going on. You know there's something wrong when the best and most memorable performance is given by Val Kilmer and he still unbalances the film by how bizarrely he is made to act as a character completely inconsequential to the film.

In fairness a lot works against them. 'The Snowman' is directed with sluggish indifference by Alfredson, who does decently with the style but makes a complete hack job of the storytelling, which is not what one expects from him judging from his previous work. 'The Snowman' suffers from too many characters and subplots that are either under-explored (Fassbender is hindered by that the character has nothing to him in terms of development other than the type of character he is and too many of the subplots are resolved unsatisfactorily, silly or left in the air) or pointless.

Regarding the script, there was a lot of awkwardness here and some chuckles that were clearly unintentional, emotional impact was as non-existent as the suspense. 'The Snowman' does an unbelievably poor job creating suspense, which is practically none after the opening, and instead lays it on thick with incredibly dull pacing, un-scary (almost listless) scares and unintentional and perplexing humour. The ending is an absolute joke, the reveal is not a surprise at all and it is further ruined by being insultingly ridiculous and illogical.

While it mostly looks good, the editing is at times chaotic and the effects are shoddy. The music is okay on its own but often doesn't fit with what's going on and can be overbearing, while the sound is far too obviously used and intrusive.

Overall, a huge disappointment, one of the biggest wastes of great potential in recent years. 2/10 Bethany Cox