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Tomas Alfredsonā€™s Scandinavian crime thriller The Snowman, based on a novel by Jo NesbĆø, starts off good ā€˜nā€™ creepy, portraying the exact conditions that mark the early lives of many a serial killer. Alas, it slowly unravels into a collection of loose ends, despite the best efforts of Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Ferguson as a dysfunctional team investigating murders in pristine Norwegian towns.

Even before The Snowman's release, Alfredson admitted the film's production was rushed and incomplete, and it shows: Entire plot lines are abandoned. Charlotte Gainsbourg's character does nothing but act confused and wear short skirts without tights in Norway. (NORWAY!) Another character is dispatched with so quickly and unceremoniously that it wasnā€™t even clear if they were, in fact, dead; anotherā€™s death is so drawn out it becomes desensitizing. Meanwhile, Fassbenderā€™s furrowed brow does a lot of the movieā€™s heavy lifting. Itā€™s capable of a lot, but not carrying an entire movie.

I liked The Snowman just fineā€”itā€™s scary, and all the casual detective knitwear looked cozyā€”but I watch a lot of murder mysteries and have a high tolerance for even the categoryā€™s most mediocre entries. This is certainly one of them. But the bones of a more complicated, interesting movie are visible: Thereā€™s something fantastically creepy about a murderous weirdo disrupting Alfredsonā€™s cleanly framed, beautifully filmed atmosphere, and some momentsā€”as when we see the first victim attackedā€”are imbued with a real sense of dread. If you love crime movies so much that youā€™ll excuse the bad ones, thereā€™s enough here to recommend The Snowman. If you donā€™t, get back to Mindhunter.