10 Movies That Unexpectedly Confused Audiences
6. The Snowman
It's relatively common for crime thriller movies to be intentionally twisty and convoluted, from the tradition of classic film noir through to more contemporary, Scandic-spiced neo-noirs like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and, yes, The Snowman.
But this Michael Fassbender-starring, Norway-set adaptation of Jo Nesbø's novel proved especially tough to follow even for the slippery standards of wilfully messy crime fiction.
Despite the seeming simplicity of its central narrative - following detective Harry Hole (Fassbender) as he tracks down a serial killer - much of the film is rendered a scarcely coherent slog. Director Tomas Alfredson later confirmed this was due to 10-15% of the shooting script never actually being filmed.
A rushed shoot reportedly prevented The Snowman being completed to its expected standard, ensuring pivotal scenes needed to fill narrative holes didn't go before cameras, forcing Alfredson to piece things together as best possible during editing.
Clearly The Snowman was never going to be a great movie no matter if Alfredson got that extra 15% in the can, but at least the spine of the story might've been a tad easier to follow. As for the final film, it's only as nonsensical as it is deeply, terribly boring.