Macabre…ish Horror Review: The Snowman

 

 

The Snowman, 2017/ 1 hr 59 min

 

 

In a remote cabin, a boy’s biological father (and inspector) abuses and sexually assaults his mother, she threatens to tell his wife and he immediately leaves. Mother and son follow but something happens to her and she releases the steering wheel and her car veers onto a frozen pond and into the water. She, unresponsive, doesn’t escape but her distraught son does.

 

Years later an inspector with Oslo Police, Harry Hole, receives a note with a childlike drawing of a snowman. He is being watched by a killler and this killer likes taunting the police.

 

Harry meets new recruit, Katrine Bratt, and they investigate the disappearance of Birte Becker, and there’s a sad snowman the yard.

 

Bratt is looking for a connection between this crime and many other missing people over a one year period. All the missing people disappear and are killed when it’s snowing and they are all married with children or were pregnant. There was an infidelity in all of their relationships.

 

One missing woman is found alive on her sister’s farm but not for long, when the inspectors return, a few minutes later, they find chickens on her body and her head on top of a snowman.

 

The victims have one thing in common, they all visited the clinic of Dr. Vetlesen. Who also oversees a high end prostitution ring for a man named Støp.

 

Later, Harry discovers Katrine is former Inspector Gert Bafto’s (Val Kilmer) daughter and he died by suspected suicide. His body sat in a chair, more than half his head shot off and coffee beans at his feet. He was brilliant, an alcoholic and suicidal plus he was the original investigator of the snowman killer.

 

The pieces are coming together and as they do, the killer comes after Harry and Katrine who are the only ones putting them together.

 

This crime thriller is pretty good. Solid story and good cast but I had to watch it twice because of the editing and layout, the flashback scenes confused me and made it harder for me to follow the story and keep the characters in order. After the second watch, I had it! The effects are graphic but it’s not particularly gory. Meanwhile, moments of sexual assault are more suggested than obvious so not graphic at all. Having said that, there are a lot of dead bodies in this movie and violence. I really enjoyed this!