From the Vault: The Snowman

So I thought it would be funny to talk about this movie, The Snowman. I think it was from 2017. Because it's so notoriously bad. And I watched it when they added it to Netflix. It was like number one on Netflix, which is not so funny. Everybody was watching this terrible snowman movie, even though it's like March or whenever by then. It's not winter.

But then to do this show, I ended up having to figure it out. That was a mistake. Because when you watch this, how much sense did this movie make to you, Samantha? Less than zero. Sitting here right now, I could not tell you the plot of this movie. So you don't know what happened. It was two hours long. There's a snowman. There's some murders. It's in Norway. It takes place in Norway. There's a man named Harry Hole. You just spoiled that. But yeah, the main character's name. And I'm sure this movie doesn't sound as silly.

I mean, this book is based on a Norwegian book by a famous author. This is apparently the seventh book in the Harry Hole mystery series. The seventh? Did they even start with book number one? I think this book did very well, so they wanted to capitalize on that. Does the book make sense? I'm assuming the book makes sense, but I haven't read the book. And at this point, I am pretty curious, and I probably will, because now I'm just like, what the fuck? But the secret about this movie, and it's not really that much of a secret, is that for reasons that have not been fully explained, when production for this ended, 10 to 15% hadn't been filmed.

And I first thought that was like they ran out of money, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It's almost like they just forgot. I'm honestly not sure. So there's like clearly key scenes that are needed for like important plot things that they went to go fucking edit the movie to like string together a story. And there's just like holes because there's stuff they never filmed for whatever reason. It's hairy holes, if you will. There are hairy. It's a very unfortunate name, at least in like English. It has, I don't know, 70s porn star connotations to me. It has like, I can't imagine.

meeting someone named Harry Hole and not immediately just going, oh, I'm sorry. Like, childhood must have been rough. I'm really sorry. Your name is literally Harry Hole. It'd be like, I don't know, even. Like, if my name was just, like, wet pussy or something. Like, I can't imagine. Like, I just can't imagine going through the life with the name Harry Hole. First name, wet. Middle name, ass. Last name, pussy. Yeah. Hi, I'm wet ass pussy. Yeah. So, yeah, it's not a great name. That's very weird.

Apparently parts of this movie are just fucking missing, so that's really weird. What I also couldn't figure out, yeah, a tiny bit went down a rabbit hole trying to figure this out. Also, what I couldn't figure out is that they did do some reshoot shoots, possibly a lot of reshoots, so I'm not sure why those plot holes are not covered. I actually think that it made it extra confusing because people have different haircuts, and you're supposed to know who they are. At some point, Michael Fassbender's hair is just a lot longer.

And I'm sure he wasn't willing to like, he's probably working on something else. He probably couldn't go back to his snowman haircut. So he just like looks different. And I feel like his ex that happened, it was just like, well, her hair is just like not the same. And this is supposed to be over like not that many days. It was just confusing. It doesn't help because I frequently lost track of who is who in this movie. And then, yeah, them looking different did not help that situation. Oh, I mean, there's only like a dozen white people in the whole cast, but they're introduced so poorly where you're like really like sitting there going, I'm sorry, who is this person for so long? And it gets like very confusing. And also just like.

plot lines just like dry up and are never, there's no resolution. So you're like, was I supposed to know who that person was? Also what happened to them? Also, does this have like anything to do with anything? Okay. It's a wild experience watching this movie. Honestly, in true me fashion, I took something that's like silly and should be a lark and was like, all right, time to take my notes. I am going to take this extremely seriously and write the most accurate plot summary. I guess I just couldn't see another way to do it.

But now we have to like sit here and go through this. And the story doesn't, the notes are misleading because the story does not actually make sense. If you hadn't done that, this would have just been about an hour and a half of, I don't know. Yesterday, I'm in the car driving. Samantha texts me.

I'm looking at your notes does this movie actually make sense to you because I can't make any sense of it and my phone asks like do you want to respond and I said yes and it was like okay sent yes and I was like no because what it was like Liz I feel really stupid do you actually understand this movie and then just like me one word yes I saw that it was like well fuck me then I guess I'm just dumb and I had to be like oh my god no respond with what the fuck I don't know why my phone just sent that it can't ask me do you want to send text and then just assume that text is yes what oh my god okay i honestly think my phone is like out to get me or it's possessed or something the same day a friend of mine had like important news about selling her house and i typed out amazing explanation point and it sent her i see so it seemed like she was giving me this great news and me just going i'm a huge-edged bitch i do not care about the things that happen like i see that's a like worst possible response yeah i think your phone is is trying to just trying to make you lose

i see honorable crack for amazing i don't i literally was like wow i'm just a cunt unbelievable okay okay so anyway this movie makes no sense but we're gonna try to make sense of it because it's just sort of a fascinating specimen like why why does any of this happen okay welcome to liz explains this movie to me yeah welcome to liz tried too hard to explain understand the snowman and is maybe the closest anyone has ever been so we open on snowy norway a child sees a man come to a house that's in like the middle of nowhere there's just snow who's referred to as uncle jonas Uncle Jonas seems to bang this kid's mom, but like once a week. Anyway, he shows up. He's quizzing the kid on history for some fucking reason, and if the kid gets an answer wrong, he hits the mom. Okay, I'm already off the rails. I thought this was this kid's dad. Oh, it is, but we don't know that yet. Oh, you're correct. This is the kid's dad, but what we find out essentially is that the kid's mom is his mistress. He has another family, so he's not very interested in this family, and he stops by like once a week.

hits the mom and quizzes the kid on like Norwegian history for some fucking reason okay so whenever he gets an answer wrong the mom gets hit and the mom says like you need to help him study more it's her fault so the kid's like I'm gonna go outside and make a snowman that's what I'm gonna do to avoid this situation that's getting too tense and weird and like everything funny that happened during the scene for me when I was watching it I put the subtitles on because I was having a hard time already like three seconds into this movie following it so I put the subtitles on and he hits the mom and like coffee beans go everywhere and the subtitle for the coffee beans was beans scatter Beans scatter. For a very intense scene, it was just beans scatter. Beans scatter. I mean, it is kind of an important part of the plot. It is. It becomes important. The kid picks up some of those coffee beans and uses them, as no child has ever done, I swear to Christ, uses them to make a snowman mouth. A really pathetic looking snowman. What did you usually use for the snowman's mouth, Samantha, if you made a snowman? Like rocks? Yeah. Or just, I don't know. I mean, you use a carrot for the nose. I guess sometimes you might use, I don't know. Not coffee beans. It's very weird.

No, I mean, I guess I don't remember my parents having whole coffee beans in our in our house. So I definitely wouldn't have been like stick in my hand. And I don't know. No, no. Okay. Yeah, I feel like we used rocks. Maybe you just like even drew like you made the impression of a mouth with like your fingers that you like drew it on there. Anyway, he has a creepy coffee bean mouth as snowmen do.

the boy comes back inside at this point uncle jonas is this old man who's actually his father is called is presumably raping the mom or whatever they're they're boning and maybe this is a thing in norway but there's like this thin window right into their bedroom terrible not a fan of this so the kid is like literally like on his tiptoes like watching them lay in the bed why would why would you have this window the peeping window i think i may have like literally looked it up and it's to like let natural light like into the hallway like from the is that necessary i mean i i guess if you like get very little light i don't know yeah fair but but i don't i don't care if i don't get a natural light i will live in the darkness i do not want a peeping window Okay, so as this is happening, the mom tells him, like, I'm going to tell your wife that you have a child with me, which, you know, she doesn't know. And the guy says, you will never see me again and runs out, which honestly, like, blessing. Good. Seems, yeah. Why is he bothering to stop by? He's just coming over, being a dick and leaving? He acts like that's, like, helping them in some way. Maybe he's giving them money, but he seems to come over, demand sex, hit her, like, traumatize a child and leave. It's like, kind of would prefer you just, like, die to the snowbank, honestly.

so he's yelling you're never gonna see me again of course the mom like runs after him to try to stop him and it should be one of those like charlie and the chocolate factory situations where you're like no don't go but she apparently doesn't want him to leave so she gets in her car with the son they're like in a car chase now but for reason there's so many times in my notes where i write for some reason because i'm not clear on why this happens they're following him in the car okay i don't know what happens to his car but she just like careens off into a frozen lake Okay. She stares straight ahead. She's like catatonic. Yeah. She just is like, you know what? I'm not following him anymore. It's frozen lake time. I think she just even lets go of the steering wheel and just lets the car drive. The kid is like, what the fuck are you doing? And he pulls the parking brake and the car like spins around and screeches to a stop. Now the lake is frozen, but it's not frozen solid enough to support the weight of a car. So the ice is starting to crack and the kid's like, you know, he's not an idiot. He's like, mom, we need to get the fuck out of here. But she stays in the car, right? So the kid sees her in the car, like go into the frozen lake because she doesn't get out. That is how we open the movie.

And then I just wrote, we are not even six minutes into this goddamn film. Because it feels like so much happened. And it's, yeah, not even minutes six. Anyway, now is the trailer time. And we go to a grown man is asleep outside holding an empty booze bottle. I swear this would cause frostbite. It seems very cold. He's literally like in Norway in winter in the snow, like in this hut that's outside. Yeah, you know, the sleeping hut. Okay, also, just like...

the rhetoric the visual rhetoric of movies would tell us that if we open with this story and then we just cut to a grown man that that is a child from that story this is what i thought i thought this i was so confused yes because that's how storytelling works is that you get uh let me introduce you to this character backstory and then you jump into them in the present right that's not what happens here honestly don't know if this is deception or not i can't tell you if it's deception or bad filmmaking was this a conscious choice to make you think that that story related to the main character or were they like fuck we've got footage of this we got footage of that we've got nothing to put in between so just yeah that's the print now i have no idea but anyway this is michael fassbender he was sleeping in this hut and apparently he doesn't have frostbite i also wrote down that he doesn't look norwegian everybody everybody in this movie is talking and just like some people are just talking in their normal voice fine some people are talking in like a made-up accent but nobody is talking the same like some people are like look this is just how i talk and you know whatever i'm not norwegian this is this movie isn't in norwegian like why would i fake a norwegian accent but then some people are but it's like i don't think it's based on anything

what's weird is that this is like a serious movie by a serious director like this is not supposed to be like this lazy like who the fuck cares but in the end it is but everything is shot like it's the most serious thing that's ever happened yes okay so whatever so this is Harry Hole everyone this drunk has to sleep outside and he okay this is one of the most fucking confusing scenes to me he goes back to what we find out is his apartment there's a guy in his apartment that's wearing the like HVAC white suit thing Harry Hole. Yes. And every time in the notes, I wrote this name in all caps because it's so funny to me. Harry Hole pulls his gun on this guy in his apartment. Not that surprising. I think he even takes a shot at him. And the guy just turns around and is like, oh, hey, you have mold. Your landlord let me in to deal with a mold issue. You're going to have to find somewhere else to stay. This guy is unfazed by people pointing guns at him. No reaction.

The business of removing mold is so fraught that he's just like, well, it's another day. Just another day in the mold business. Another day in Norway where people just try to kill. Also, they cut to the shot of a puppy. And I was like, whose puppy is that? Like, what is happening? I thought he was going to shoot the puppy. There was a moment where I was like, all right, this is fucking off the rails. He does not shoot the puppy. I feel like this movie is very poorly edited, but maybe that's not fair because they literally didn't have the scenes that they were supposed to have. But everything is just so, okay, so whatever. And that's when we learned that this guy's name is Harry Hole. And that he needs to stay somewhere else where his apartment is getting fixed. That's what, he just doesn't.

what why is this i have no idea okay so now we go to an art gallery where a woman is showing large sketches that are done on just like randomly sized bits of brown paper they look terrible anyway harry hole is just like standing there at the window like looking at this woman as she works all right all right it turns out that this man who doesn't even know how to sleep inside is a police officer i guess that's not a surprise so he goes to work and they're getting new tablets which is like kind of important so now he goes to lunch where he's sitting alone he has a really big stack of mail to go through and his boss comes by because he hasn't come to work or even called in for a week Which is pretty sloppy behavior. He was passed out in a snowbank. He was just, he should be dead. No one has any idea how he's alive. It was like when those frogs, like, you know, they freeze and die, but then they come back to life. He's like that. He's like that. And he's like, sorry, boss, I couldn't call in to tell you I wasn't coming to work because I was frozen. But I'm alive now. It's fine. And so he lies and says that his uncle died and that he, like, was, like, morning time. So he's allowed to, like, backdate whatever. I was like, I assume in Norway the, like, workers' rights are just so good that you could be like, oh, yeah, I didn't come to work or tell you for a week. It's fine. Yeah, I was frozen in a snowbank. Sorry. Oh, okay. Sorry. Sorry.

And he's like, oh, man. See, he's clearly struggling. This is established immediately. But what he really needs, Samantha. Which you think is because he watched his mom die going into a lake. See, at this point, I'm still thinking, oh, of course he's an alcoholic. He watched his mom slowly sink into a frozen lake. Not the same Norwegian. Different Norwegian guy. But it's a good case that's really going to turn his life around, Samantha. He needs to see other people suffer. Obviously, he's a grizzled old detective. He's a grizzled detective. He's still grizzled. Well, the great news for him.

This guy that's going, oh man, I need a case, is that the very first piece of mail he opens from this giant stack of mail is a case for him. Wow, that really worked out. And it says, hilariously, Mr. Police. Because apparently a child wrote this. You really could freeze to death that way. While you were laying there, I was watching Mummy. By the time you read this, I will have brought her a... And then there's a drawing of a snowman. And it's just seriously like a circle with another circle for the head and like two lines for arms. You probably have seen this as a meme.

100% haven't seen this as a meme. And what I didn't realize is that that meme is not in the movie anywhere. But the promotional poster for this movie was a note and it said, Mr. Policeman, you could have saved her. I gave you all the clues. And then it had a drawing of a snowman. And everybody was like, this seems like the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. That's not in the movie.

it's like narrated in the trailer. I don't understand if it was supposed to be in the movie. I think maybe it was and they had to cut it out because it was like, what clues? Like, what the fuck are you talking about? He doesn't give him it. This note is not helpful. There's no clue here. It's not like you look back on it and you're like, oh, it meant this. Unless there was a very realistic drawing of the snowman. It is interesting to me that Americans draw a snowman with three circles, but everybody else draws it with two. So think about how you draw a snowman. Does it have an abdomen and then a legs or is it just a big ball with a head? Wow. You've given us a lot to ponder. That's why the emoji is just a ball with a head. It doesn't have that middle.

The middle part where you put the buttons. You know. The snowman thorax. It doesn't have that. Listeners, are you looking for a PhD thesis? Why? Why is this a thing? The different cultural depictions of snowmen. Honestly, I would love to read that. Okay. So now he's outside waiting for the art gallery manager, who is his ex-girlfriend, Raquel.

and he says like like you know who any of these people are like this is some narration or fucking something or just expect it to just know or just like don't care or like maybe if he ever spoke he's a very quiet care maybe if he ever like said to a co-worker like oh that's my ex-girlfriend like that would be helpful because we have no idea who anyone is but he is telling her oh i didn't forget your kid's birthday i'm like he clearly he got drunk and missed the birthday but he's saying oh i didn't forget i have a thing for your your kid so this kid is oleg and he's not harry hole's son but harry hole still feels like a fatherly attachment to him which is you know respectable He's going with that clueless philosophy of you divorce wives, not children. So he wants to still be in Oleg's life. Again, the reason I, the viewer thinks that he's like this is from trauma of his father leaving him. Right. Maybe you're supposed to think that and then it's a reveal that it's not him. But I'm not, I honestly don't know. So anyway, we also learned that Oleg doesn't get along well with Raquel's new boyfriend, Mathis, who's a doctor.

Anyway, now Harry Hole gets drunk again and passes out on the street in the snow. Why is he always doing this? It's because he can't go into his apartment because it's full of old me and made no other plans. Maybe. He doesn't have a girlfriend to go crash into her place anymore. Apparently Norway doesn't have hotels. He's just going to sleep on the literal frozen ground. And then at the same time, a woman who we have not been introduced to before is walking to her car at night and she gets hit by a random snowball. She looks around.

There's no one there. She gets in her car and she drives away, not realizing that she's being followed by this like tiny shitty box of a European car that looks like very silly. It's just very hard for me to take it as this like menacing presence. It's like very small red punk of junk is like slowly following her anyway. so she drives as she's driving her daughter text messages her oh mommy i miss you and instead of just driving home she decides to pull over and respond to her daughter that she's gonna be home soon and then the car which i guess is like new to following people doesn't know what to do and it's just like uh it's just like waiting in the middle of the road and she's like waving for it this is actually something that would definitely happen in minneapolis everybody's like too nice to drive properly so it's just like yeah go ahead actually you don't need to just wait for me that's super weird so the car like reluctantly goes ahead of her okay so now she gets home she sees her daughter through their like front facing window and she motions to her daughter like oh you made a snowman and the daughter's like what because she didn't She didn't make that snowman, everyone. Is this the snowman with the weird stick mouth that just looks sad? You know, I should have done a little drawing of each snowman, but I didn't. They could have at least made these snowmen kind of menacing. They just look pathetic. They also were not similar enough. There's this coffee bean mouth thing, but they don't always have that. There's the coffee bean mouth, and then there's the sad stick mouth. And sometimes it literally just has a frowny face, which is the funniest one. Which looks like something from Calvin and Hobbes. Am I actually supposed to be scared that there's a frowny snowman with stick arms looking on?

I did find, I was like, this reminds me of something. And I did find that there was an R.L. Stine book literally called The Snowman that was about like a creepy, I don't remember if the snowman killed people or a killer like put people in snowmen, but there was a book that was essentially like this that I read in like 92. Yeah, and you sent me the cover and the cover art for that. It's scarier! It's scarier! It's really actually quite scary. It has a long, like a weirdly like too long and very pointy carrot nose. The head is off to one side. There's dramatic shadows. It's just like, it is creepier than anything in this film.

It's very creepy. And it made me immediately go, oh, it's actually not hard to make a snowman scary. Like it doesn't have to be a sad, pathetic stick snowman. Yeah. And now I want to find that book and read it again and see how similar it is to this movie. But so the mom at this house gets home. The dad is mad that she wasn't home sooner. So clearly marriage is on the fritz. He storms off. Now it's time to go to bed and we can see both the mother and the daughter get into their separate rooms at the same time. They also have that like peeping window.

Again, really not in favor of that household addition. But a snowball, I almost said snowman. That would be really funny. A snowball is thrown against the mom's window. So she gets up to see who's there and who's looking into her window.

A snowman. You're probably really, really scared right now. I mean, I would if it was a scary snowman. It's funny. It's like a doodle snowman. Yeah. Okay, so now it's daytime. Harry Hole is passed out on the couch in this police station. By the way, I think I go through life from one pass out to another. This man is a koala. He is sleeping 20 hours a day. Why is this man awake? Also, I think I put this somewhere else in the notes, but it's confusing that this place is a police station because it does not look like a police station. It looks like a bus stop.

It looks like a bus stop mixed with, like, a dorm room. It's, like, all glass windows. The rooms are super small. It seems to be full of couches. And people in the background are playing ping-pong half the time. Which I assume there's just, like, no crime in Norway. There's, like, nothing for them to do. But also, they're all using, like, brightly colored, like, Ikea-ish furniture. So it just gives it this, like, warm vibe. I don't understand. I was like, all right. I mean, I've never been in Norway. I don't know. I've never been arrested in Norway. I guess I don't know what the police station is like. Looks kind of lit.

i'd like to play some ping pong when i get arrested um okay so he's passed out on the couch he's woken up by this pretty woman named katrina who was looking for a quiet place to drink her coffee and she apparently knows who harry hole is because she studied his cases at the academy because he's a big shot despite every literal detail we've learned about it despite the fact he's sleeping outside and just breathing in mold willy-nilly he's yet to do it again the guy that's coming to take care of his mold can't even show up to work or call his boss to like lie that he's sick but whatever apparently he's like a master detective and you're like i guess i'll take your word for it katrina So now we're back with that young daughter. She wakes up in her room. She calls for her mom, but her mom doesn't respond. So she looks through the little peeping window and she's like, oh, that's weird. Mom's not there. But she looks out the like main window and the snowman is now wearing her mother's scarf. Oh my God. So scary. Okay. So now we're back at the police station. Yeah. Ikea, blah, blah, blah.

Harry Hole is so desperate for a case. Or that's what I thought was happening. So he follows Katrina outside to do whatever she's doing. And I guess it's to get a ride because he doesn't have a license. And I was like, oh, he's just so desperate for a case. He's throwing himself in there. Except when they get to the house, he just sits in the car. So I was like, so did he really just want a ride? He's just a mooch? I guess. Anyway, Katrina is going to this missing mom snowman case that we've been seeing. So the neighbor called it in. She saw the daughter wandering around outside in her pajamas and went over to see what the problem was.

I wrote, obviously she got snowmanned, which is what happens to you in this movie. She got snowmanned. The dad is away on business. They don't know what happened to the mom. Harry Hole is not helping it in any way. He's just like sitting around in his car, looking at stuff that happens to be in the car, which includes a newspaper article about Norway trying to host the World Cup. And that's the first time that we see a photo of J.K. Simmons of insurance commercial fame, who is in this movie. And I feel like this wouldn't even work if he wasn't famous because I wouldn't retain that face at all. But, you know, he wants pictures of Spider-Man and he used to be Skoda on Law and Order.

And I literally didn't write down his character's name ever. I just referred to him as J.K. Simmons, so I would not get confused. That's fine. Okay, this is how I think is the most confusing part of this fucking movie, is that we get flashback scenes, and I don't think they are well established that they are in the past. They are not. So Val Kilmer is in this movie, and the scenes with him, maybe it's supposed to be a twist. Honestly, again, I am not sure. But those scenes take place in 2006, and everything else happens like 10 years later.

that you have to like see the date on a on a folder i'm not kidding this might explain why i was so confused i'm not sure i realized a folder and it says 2006 on it and you're supposed to know that it's in the past except that it could be an old folder that doesn't actually establish like the present day also i don't think i register information like that like really at all i don't really care we might be discovering why i fucking did not understand the plot of this film Because I didn't realize those were flashbacks. I was like, who are these characters? What is happening? I don't understand. We don't know. The why we're getting this information is kind of a twist, but it's also not established that this is in the past and has already happened. It seems like it's a simultaneous timeline, which it is not. Okay, well, maybe that explains why I fucking was so confused. Also, I can't remember exactly. Valcomer had a stroke, maybe?

he's had a medical problem and he cannot really speak anymore. And I don't want to be mean, but it's kind of weird that they put him in this movie. Like he's clearly having a lot of difficulty talking and they clearly dubbed in his voice and they didn't do that good of a job. So I get maybe you wanted to work with Val Kilmer, but it's... The effect of it is weird because he's clearly not talking. It just doesn't line up. I don't know. But anyway, a guy is there to talk to him about his missing wife. And then Val Kilmer is like, why are you coming to me? I'm suspended from the police department. And the guy's like, no, you're my friend. And I have faith in you to use your sleuthing skills. And I need this hush hush because his wife is missing. He went and looked at her credit card statements to see if she was like having an affair or whatever. And she saw in the credit card statement that she saw a quote pregnancy doctor, despite the fact that they haven't boned in three years. Now, look, I am American.

maybe somewhere else they use the phrase pregnancy doctor but we call that an OBGYN so I'm not I was like is this like teacher school in Canada is it just like not a phrase we use does someone else say pregnancy doctor and not I don't know fertility fertility specialist or gynecologist like I was like pregnancy doctor Every episode of Degrassi where they talk about teacher school just makes me like fall down laughing. I don't know why. But anyway, he's looking for this missing woman, his wife, who in the photo is standing next to J.K. Simmons because she needs insurance probably. But again, would I remember that that's the same bald guy as in this other photo if he wasn't like a famous person? No. So that's bad storytelling. Okay.

Harry Hole now sees the snowman, everyone. And it's not wearing the scarf anymore. And he looks at a note to make sure that did have a snowman on it. And it did. So he sees a snowman and he has a note with a snowman. How could you forget? Also, he hasn't told anyone about that note. I'm not sure he ever does. So great. Great exact work. So then he goes inside to talk to the daughter. This part is probably your favorite. She was wearing a donkey mask.

okay you would think that except that it's a fucking creepy and so he talks to her and like donkey noises i swear to christ this is in the movie i think he was making the donkey noises no he like just starts making them to her and calling her mr donkey wait i thought the noises were coming from her i'm so confused regardless i was freaked out it's supposed to be creepy i think they just wanted a totally random thing to put in the trailer so you could go oh my god what the fuck is that and then when you see it you're like oh i mean i don't know how to explain explain why but like it's creepy like not in a good way no like it's unsettling in a way that is like not i don't know it's not like horror movie unsettling like it's supposed to i don't know i can't explain it but i didn't like it it's off-putting it's probably the most off-putting thing in this whole movie which includes like literal dead body well not real dead body parts but you see like severed limbs and shit this is more upsetting than any of that okay the daughter is now wearing the scarf which i'm not sure that ever gets realized but that's like kind of they should know this the snowman was wearing her scarf the daughters ruined the chain of evidence So he's like asking about their parents and their marriage isn't good. And she saw the dad crying last week. And he asks her why she built a snowman facing the house. And the daughter, once again, is like, oh, my God, I did not build that snowman. Why do adults keep asking me about this fucking snowman? I did not. It must be extremely irritating. OK, so now Katrina drives Harry Hole, all caps, home.

He says that the mom is going to come back, that she was clearly having an affair. And Katrina's like, you're a fucking idiot. She left her handbag. She left the door of the house open with a child sleeping inside. Isn't Larry Holes supposed to be this detective? Yeah. And she's like, I think she ran out to get some D and the woman's like, and left her child in danger. She was that horny. Okay, Harry. Like, that's what you would do, not the rest of us. So Katrina, it turns out, is working on a theory about a pattern of missing women. And that includes the case that Val Kilmer is working on and also this other case.

And all of the other case, by the way, we like never learned anything about. So hope you weren't waiting for that. All of them involve an unhappy marriage and a couple that has young children. But Harry Hole doesn't take that seriously. I don't really know why he was supposedly bored, but this is like not good enough for him. So he goes back to his mold apartment to breathe in more mold. And he looks at this case where a woman's body is cut up and left in segments in the snow. Like half of the body is left alone, but the other part is like cut into little bits and then arranged. That's never explained, by the way. What does that mean? What's that about? Well, you'll never find out. Hope you weren't waiting for that. So now we're back in time again.

And we see Val Kilmer going to look at that body from that case, which was found by schoolchildren. And he has to go up a mountain in one of those like cable car gondola things. Because this movie has every single type of transportation, by the way. That's very funny. I liked the scene like visually. If I had to pick like a part of this movie that I liked, I think it was the scene like where he's in the mountain. Like there's all those birds and he like fires a gun, which I think is needlessly dramatic. But he fires his gun and all the birds fly away and the body is revealed. I thought that was a cool scene. So I'm going to like.

give this movie a sliver of credit for shooting a cool scene i can't remember this director's name but he is a good director he directed the swedish let the right one in that vampire movie which is so good and he directed tinker taylor soldier spy which i fucking hate spy stories and i thought that movie was so good so clearly he's capable i just don't i don't know if he got like real high on set and just like forgot to feel like i have no idea Something went horribly wrong. But yeah, this part is not so bad. The CGI of the birds flying away is pretty much shit. But yeah, Val Kilmer goes, he sees all the birds are like pecking at the dead body. In order to see the pattern, he like shoots his gun in the air at the top of the mountain and all the birds fly away. And so then you can see that, oh, it's the same thing that Harry Hole was looking at.

right okay this almost kind of makes sense so far so in the present day katrina meets harry hole at a restaurant that's closed i have no idea why if he wants to hear he's he now is going to reluctantly hear about the case so they discuss this cold case where a woman married woman had three children she went missing six years ago uh the day that she vanished samantha it was snowing oh my god i just assume it's snowing every day yeah well harry hole is like it's winter in norway like that's not special but she goes through several cases that have like that same mo so she believes that it's the first snow of the winter that sets the killer off If that is true, we never learn why. It's so weird. Yeah. Why would his kink be the first snow? That, I don't know. And that he seems to be targeting women that are in unhappy relationships and have young children. And Harry Hole is like, I don't know. Pretty much when women die, it's the husband. And you're like, Harry Hole, you're not wrong. But in these cases, the husbands have had solid alibis. Sometimes they're out of the country. They're like, you know, nowhere around. Then Harry Hole asks Katrina if she's hungry. When she says yes, he offers her this like disgusting overcooked sausage that he's cut in the same way as the dead body.

Which I don't know if that's sexual harassment, but that's like not appropriate workplace banter. Here, do you want the sausage I cut up like a corpse? Ha ha. Why did he ask her? Oh my God, I hate it. Okay. So Harry Hall now goes over the missing mom's schedule with a husband and he finds out that she also saw a doctor. So now he's going to go watch his ex's kid, Oleg, play a hockey game.

And then the new boyfriend, who's a cosmetic surgeon, shows up and gives him a prescription for sleeping pills. And then, like, these scenes are so short. Why does he need sleeping pills? He seems like he's sleeping all the time. Yeah, that's a great point. I just said that he's a koala. It's not established that he has trouble sleeping. In fact, we see him passed out at least three times up until this point. Maybe he's been self-medicating insomnia with booze, and that's why he's been drinking so much. He says he has trouble sleeping.

We haven't seen any evidence of that. And the doctor really asks no questions. He's like, I can give you a prescription for that right now, even though I'm not your doctor and we're sitting at a kid's hockey game. So that happens. Then Harry Hole and this kid Oleg are on the bus so seriously eating ice creams. Like I've never seen anyone look so serious while eating ice cream. Also, do not eat ice cream on a cone on a moving bus. That's not going to work. But OK, now we've had cable cars, cable cars, buses.

We're going to get through all the modes of transportation. So they're, like, so serious about these ice creams. And Oleg is talking about how he would like to meet his biological father, but his mom is against it. And Harry Hole's sort of like, well, you're a kid. Like, for now, you kind of have to do what your mom says. And I'm sitting here like, didn't your mom sink into a frozen lake? Like, yeah. Literally. I'm like, I don't understand. I don't understand. And he offers to take Oleg on, like, this school camping trip that's supposed to be, like, this father-son bonding thing.

And Oleg pretends that he doesn't care, but obviously he's really excited. So they go to a concert together, but it's really bad. Even though the venue looks great, I would love to see a show there, but it's just a dude screaming. It looks terrible. So they leave quickly, and at this point, another woman is missing, so Harry has to go. But he gets picked up, and he's like, we'll deal with that in the morning. Katrina comes to pick him up to go investigate this, and he's like, that's tomorrow Harry's problem. I sort of can relate. Yeah, I mean, this is why we shouldn't be involved in investigating missing people, though. I'd be like, I don't know, it's after 9.30. I'm pretty tired.

Are you sure this has to be dealt with now? Because my brain fog is going to set it. Like I'm ready for my several hours of decompression time. No, but he has to like rush home just so Michael Fassbender can hang out shirtless by a window. The booze has done his body well. Being an alcoholic has given him carefully sculpted abs. Pretty sure that's not how that works. Also has nothing to do with anything except they were like, well, we paid for Michael Fassbender. We are getting a scene where he's not wearing a shirt. Okay. So now the next day, because I guess he needed to drink more.

they go to the home of the missing woman who is chloe 70 except they get there and she's there and she's like well i'm not missing obviously i'm right here also it's super distracting that i'm in this movie just doing a random accent that i've made up um and she's chopping the heads off of chickens i mean chloe 70 is in this movie for five minutes i have no idea why they bothered to pay her they could have gotten like you know someone not famous but she's seriously barely in here but she spends most of the time like chopping heads off chickens and screaming at a made-up accent so really she makes the best of it um so she's reported missing and she's like well i'm here that's totally random and weird and katrina's like so do you have any children which is like so random and she's like yeah no so anyway they leave and then chloe 70 calls some guy and is like why are you telling people i'm missing it's over blah blah blah and it becomes clear from the conversation that she had an abortion and this dude was pissed about it so she like turns around back to her chicken beheading station the like stump she's killing chickens on and there's this naked baby doll and honestly there's a second where i was like is this movie so bad that that is supposed to be a real baby like there's a second where i was like is that a cgi baby a baby like am i supposed to think someone put a real baby there but no it's a baby doll

So she walks over and she's like, what the fuck? Why is this baby doll here? When a mysterious man wearing all black injects something into her neck and she collapses. Okay, this is another thing that I find very confusing about this movie and I do not appreciate. Is that now the killer, who is the man attacking her obviously, opens up this briefcase and takes out this like special device. This is not a real thing. I looked this up. This is not a thing. You can't just make up equipment and pretend like I'll know what it is. It's like this barotting of device. It's like a wire connected to a pizza cutter that you can like make the wire get tight enough to like cut body parts off.

Except that doesn't exist in real life. I thought this was some tool that I didn't know about, right? And I was like, oh, they came up with a new tool to use to kill people in a creative way. No, they just fucking made something up. It's so confusing. It's like, you should know what this is. No, I shouldn't. You created it out of your own deranged mind.

I feel like it could be our summary of the whole movie. I should know what this is. I don't. You created it out of your own deranged mind. That's just the tagline. I feel like there's something about this movie that makes you feel like, oh my god, it's me. What did I do? That's how I felt. Yeah, it is you. Yes, Samantha. And you should feel bad about it. Don't know why my phone ended that. This movie gaslights you into thinking that it's your fault. It doesn't make sense. But you're like, but I wasn't involved in the production in any way. And it's like, weren't you? By watching the movie?

Don't you think you're just as guilty as the writers, directors, and producers? It's like somehow it's on you where you're like, is that a garrotting device? Or is that just a pizza cutter and like, yeah, like a piece of wire. Like the thing you use in ceramics glass, like cut clay. Like what? It's not real. Mac looked it up for me. He was like reading all these like Reddit things about people trying to figure out what they used in the movie to like make it.

This is not a thing. Anyway, the cops are driving away. But then another call comes in. It's like Chloe 70 is missing. She's famous. You better go find her. And they were like, we were literally just there. She's fine. And they're like, yeah, but that call, we got another call. This one came in only two minutes ago. At this point, the killer is very dramatically building a snowman. I looked down at my notes and I was like, oh yeah, now it's snowman building. Snowman building. Snowman building. Okay. This is another thing that makes no sense to me. I think something got cut out. So they go back to the farm.

And they're like, wow, we're sorry. We got another call about you, but you're fine. And then Chloe Sevigny is like, oh no, I'm not so-and-so. I'm her twin sister. Why? Why? It's in there for five seconds. Why does she have to play her twin? It never comes up again. This twin scene is the exact moment in this film where I stopped trying to understand it. No, that's for the past. The entire rest of the time, I'm like, you know what? This is just going to wash right over me. I have no fucking idea what's happening.

Because the only way to understand this movie is to watch it twice, sit down and take vigorous seven pages of notes, read multiple articles, and watch a couple YouTube videos. It's not worth it. It's not worth it. So I have no idea why you would cast Chloe Seventy in the first place. And I have no idea why you would make her play her own twin for like five seconds. But because I read there's stuff in the trailer that's not in the movie, I went back and watched the trailer again. And it clearly shows Chloe Seventy getting her leg caught in a bear trap. That's not in the movie. That seems boss. Where's that? Why would you film that and not give that to me? There's also a part where Michael Fassbender is just like yelling at a fire.

That's not in the movie. I think we're missing some crucial stuff. There's probably something more with the twid. It's probably in the book, but it's not in the movie. I don't think we ever see this one again. Because they find the chickens eating a body, but it has no head. So now it's suddenly nighttime. I don't know where the whole day went. Michael Fassbender has to get one of those mega X-Files flashlights and look for the head, I guess. I'm just assuming, everyone. So he goes to...

I don't know what this place is. A missile silo? A frozen day? It's an indoor circular building. Your guess is as good as mine. It has frozen ice. It's really deep. Why is this on a farm? I don't know. Is it an indoor dam? I'm so confused. I don't even understand the structures that are in this movie. Okay. But he goes to this frozen missile silo place and way at the bottom, which is very like below where he is, is a snowman in this little space. But guess what, everyone? It's got Chloe Seventy's head on it.

Does it look good? You wonder. No, no, it looks real stupid. It looks impressively. I'm so sorry. I don't know at this point that anyone listening to this was expecting it to be a cinematic masterpiece. This scene with the snowman and human head. I watched, I'm sorry. I read an article a little while ago, maybe like a year or so ago by, I think it was Drew McGarry wrote this article about why CGI sucks now, which was super interesting. And it was, I mean, I guess once you think about it, it's kind of obvious, but it's just like, it used to be a CGI was used sparingly and thoughtfully. And at this point.

They're just like, I don't know, CGI it later. And so it's like all rushed. Like it's expected to do like way more than it can realistically do. Like people just assume it can do everything. And that's kind of why it looks like shit. But I also, maybe this movie ran out of money. I'm not really sure what happened. Isn't CGI expensive though? Like, or maybe they just paid for shitty CGI. I don't know. Well, the thing is, everything gets rushed. It gets sent to like the studios that do the CGI, but they're not given enough time. Right? Like.

so because they want it to come out this whatever date i don't so like everything is like happening like too scrambly and fast and people if they just like cut back on the amount that they were using it would look better but instead it's like oh no you have to like cgi all of venice in the background there or whatever and people are like oh man we only have like a month to do that guess what it's gonna look like shit now for a scene that's connected to um nothing So it's a gala for rich people about whether or not Norway's going to host the World Cup. Is that established well? No. Okay. And J.K. Simmons is there and he comes out and he does this bizarre accent that's totally different than the one Chloe Sevigny was doing. And I guess that's what he thinks when people in Norway sound like, but I've never heard anyone talk like that ever. And...

Harry Hole happens to be there because he wants to talk to his boss about putting together a team to investigate these disappearances. And I guess it couldn't wait till Monday or whatever. So anyway, everyone's there. And what happens is J.K. Simmons goes into the theater of wherever they are. And this man just brings a young woman and forces the woman to show her boobs to J.K. Simmons. And he takes a picture and then just storms off and calls that guy an idiot. He's really mad. What does this mean? Okay.

I'm pretty sure this is when I texted you and asked you if you understood. I think this is where I was at, where I was like, what the fuck is this? I am positive that in the book or some version of the script in this film, this was connected to something else. But in the movie, as it stands today, it is never explained. And you get the impression that J.K. Simmons is sleazy, but what is he up to? Is he running some sort of sex trafficking ring? Is he interested in international sports for nefarious reasons? We never find out. We never find out what he is doing. Is he just a sleazy dude who has sex with a lot of women and some of them, I don't know, get forced to be topless? Has his girls gone wild? Like, I don't understand. I don't understand what's happening. And I get that you can have things in the story that don't end up connecting to the end.

But usually with a red herring, you find out what that thing is. And that thing doesn't remain a mystery. And in this case, we have this red herring that literally you go, what the fuck? And you never find out. What is it? What is it? Truly bizarre. Is he going to have sex with that woman? Is he selling her? Why does he need the photo? Who is that woman? None of those questions. Are ever answered. Where are they? Why? No one knows. No one knows. But Katrina saw it all. Okay? So there you go. So now Harry Hole goes home to his mold apartment and he finds the mold guy there and he kicks him out. But guess what? Why are you kicking out the mold guy?

First of all, he told you to stay in another place until he was done. There's lots of mold in your apartment. You should not be breathing it in. You should not be sleeping there. Oh my God. But he's like, get out. So he kicks the mold guy out. Well, guess what? Something I didn't realize the first time I saw the movie, that's not the mold guy. Because he passes the mold guy on the street holding the puppy.

Why does the mold guy have a puppy? I don't know. The puppy is how we're supposed to know it's the mold guy? Well, I guess you recognize him, maybe. But also, he has the puppy. Is it Harry Hole's puppy? No. Did he steal his puppy? It's the mold guy's puppy that apparently he brings to moldy apartments to breathe in the mold, as he would want a puppy to do. Okay, no, you are correct. I did not get that at all. So someone else was wearing the white hazmat suit in his apartment, and they switched his prescriptions. Okay. I only know that because Max told me.

I did not get that even from watching this twice. Even sitting here now, I feel dumb. Or I'm like, I should have realized that was two different people. No. It should have occurred to me. Oh, you didn't memorize the face of the mold guy you saw for five seconds when he was almost shot but then didn't care? Well, guess what? That's him. And he just happens to be standing right outside the apartment when he's not working there, holding his own puppy so that when someone walks by in the hazmat suit, he can be like, huh. Like, that's weird. I wear that too.

but that also is that scene is five seconds so if you're blank you'll miss the whole thing which is probably what happened you know you're right that's probably what happened i looked down for a second because matt was like oh he changed the prescriptions and i was really like he did this is my second time watching this movie oh he did that's why he was in the apartment because i honestly had no idea okay anyway harry cole now has the small investigative team he asked for he has like i don't know three other cops working for him he doesn't seem like he's done a very good job so no why is he not a team because he's a He's a big shot, Samantha. I don't see why. This is a lot like the boss character in Luther, where Luther is always doing something unhinged, and the boss is like, well, he is brilliant. We might as well let him do whatever he wants. And you're like, I don't live in England, but I'm pretty sure that's not how anything works. And that's exactly what's happened here. The guy's like, well, it is Harry Hole, who surprisingly does not star in pornography. We better let him just do this. I know he sleeps in ditches, but he is a brilliant detective. He literally can't just say, boss, I'm not going to be in next week. He's so brilliant. Yeah, and they're meeting in an abandoned library.

They're like, where are they? They're not in the police station anymore. They're in some big bookshelf-y room. I don't know. Bookshelf-y room. I don't know where it is. It looks like something that would be like in a university but closed off. Welcome to my crib. This is my bookshelf-y room. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I don't know if it's a library, Samantha. That's my point. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Bookshelf-y is just my favorite word, actually. Yeah. I hope you have a bookshelf-y day. Okay.

So what the investigative team is looking for is a connection between the missing women, and they're specifically interested in what doctors were these women seeing. If they were all seeing the same doctor, because they don't seem to know each other, right? The pregnancy doctor. Right. Were they all seeing the same pregnancy doctor? A thing pretty much every woman has. And they find out that two of the victims did see the same doctor, and they are presuming, based on I'm not sure what, that that was for an abortion.

So they go to see him and the guy is like creepy for no reason. And we're also supposed to think it's creepy that he's wearing toenail polish and I just don't find that creepy. But anyway, Katrina sees a picture of him with JK Simmons, which he's like ripped out of a newspaper and taps to the wall like a child. Like, why is this rich? This man that lives in like a fabulous mansion with all this like ornately carved wood and shit. It's huge. Why is he ripping things out of magazines and tacking them to the wall with thumbtacks?

Don't know. But anyway, he wanted everyone to know that he knows J.K. Simmons. And then she was like, what's your connection with him? He's like, oh, he donates money to me. She's like, that's weird. He's kind of like this conservative political guy. Why would he be giving you an abortion doctor money? He's like, well, I also research premature birth and he supports that.

and then you're like, oh, that guy's a political guy? Way to tell me this, like, now. I thought he was just a rich dude that liked the World Cup or something. Like, why has no character been established in any way? You're just supposed to know that. Like, oh, obviously. He's, like, in politics. Okay. Yes, this is one of the complaints I had, which is that characters just keep being introduced. Like, I'm supposed to know who they are. Right. Or how they're relevant in any way. Or what they do, or how they're connected to each other, or just, like, anything about them. But you don't know. Okay, so whatever. So they're suspicious of this doctor, and he does seem kind of creepy, but he lawyers up because they're asking too many questions, and he leaves. So now...

We do not learn where Harry Hole is going, but he's on a train without Katrina. He just decides to take a train somewhere. Where? We don't know yet. But he bumps into his ex's new boyfriend, that Dr. Mathis or whatever his name is. And while they're talking, he realizes, oh, I'm supposed to be on that camping trip with that kid right now, but I'm such a brilliant detective. I can't hang on to basic information.

I'm so brilliant, I don't know what day it is or where I'm supposed to be. Okay, you really get the sense that Harry Hole is like, he's messed up. He can't keep anything straight. He's an alcoholic. And I'm sorry to keep repeating this, but I'm still thinking it's because he suffered trauma as a child. Okay, I'm guessing because this is like the seventh book of the series, there's a reason, I don't know, book six, that he's fucked up now, right? Like something fucking horrible happened at the end of book six or the end of book five, you know, and he's struggling. We don't know. Well, we don't know. We're just told that he's brilliant. Maybe it's all the mold. Maybe it's the Stachybondras. Honestly!

He just keeps going back there and breathing in more. How brilliant can the man be? He's been told there's dangerous mold in the apartment. And he's like, great, I'll continue sleeping there. And they're like, I don't think that's a good idea. And he's like literally already asleep. Like, yeah, his insomnia is probably the Stachybotrys. His memory, his short term memory loss, probably the Stachybotrys. That's a very interesting interpretation of this movie. And I like it. I don't think it's intentional, but it actually works better than what they've like meant to do. Because, yeah, I'm supposed to believe this guy's a brilliant detective. He can't remember he's supposed to take this kid on a camping trip, right? So anyway, his ex's new boyfriend covers for him.

he calls the kid and he's like look i'm so sorry i forgot to tell you i have a message from harry hole that something came up at work and he's not gonna be able to make it and i was supposed to tell you that last night because you see the kid like go to the bus right and he's like gonna get on with all his pals and he's like excited but then harry will never shows up and then he has to go back to the car and the mom's like well can i go with you and he has to be like shut up mom right like the mom's trying to make it better but it's actually making it worse that's probably the most realistic scene in the movie that's five seconds where the kid's like shut up mom anyway so this doctor guy who gave him sleeping pills covers for him Okay, great. So now Harry Hole is going to talk to the husband from the case Val Kilmer was investigating. So this is where our two timelines converge, except that it was not really established that one of those was in the past. Of this entire time, I thought they were concurrent. Yeah. Truly. And we find out that the missing wife was having an affair with J.K. Simmons.

who also like screwed this guy in some business thing or something. I was like, why do I care? I barely know who this person is. Okay. But she didn't see the same doctor. She didn't see that creepy guy with the toenail polish. So, and at this point we learned that Harry Hole cannot do just like basic investigative information, which is that he does not know that Val Kilmer is dead. Now I realize these are two different cities in Norway, but I sort of feel like if you were going to a totally different city to talk to a cop about their case, you would, I don't know, call ahead. Also, I sort of feel like this guy's death would have been a scandal that would have made it to your city.

Maybe it's the short term memory loss. But see, exactly. I feel like there's no way he would go. He's like, so when can I talk to Bill Kilmer? And the person he's talking to is like, Bill Kilmer is dead, you fucking idiot. Like, how did you not know this? And I was like, yeah, that's really weird. How did you just explain it? It's the mold. He was told this like five times. He just doesn't remember. It's honestly heartbreaking. He'll never be the same.

Okay, so he doesn't know Val Kilmer's fucking dead. So now we get a flashback to Val Kilmer, who's getting out of the bathtub to find snowy footprints, everyone. Snowy footprints. Inside. Inside. That's a lot of snow. I mean, they would melt. I mean, did the person just walk by two seconds before he got out of the bath? I mean, we live in fucking Minnesota. I have never seen snowy footprints tracking through my house. Never. That's just a puddle of water. Anyway, he sees the snowy footprints, and it leads to another note. This is on this, like, pale blue paper.

It's the same as other snowman notes. And it says, sorry to interrupt your drinking. You are finding out a lot about me. Do you want to find out more? Let's have a cup of coffee in your hut. Snowman drawing. And honestly, there's like nothing threatening about this note.

Let's have a cup of coffee in your hut. In your hut. What's the threatening sentence that's ever been uttered? I was like, okay. And it turns out Val Kilmer has this like cabin, right? That's what he means by the hut. That's not explained really either. Okay. Weird to call it a hut, but I guess maybe that's a Norwegian thing. I have no idea. So now Val Kilmer is on the phone and he's trying to talk to a doctor's office about a patient that may have had an abortion. And they're like, well, we can't tell you that. But he's annoyed because someone in the office is having like a birthday party and he can't hear. So he gets drunk, like goes out the window of the office. He's walking on this part of the building that I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to walk on this like weird.

architectural ledge he's like giving everyone the double bird through the finger through the window and like pretending to pee on them with a water bottle he's possibly more unhinged than Harry Hole he's not doing well he like literally is drinking booze out of his water bottle at work and then just like throws it off the building like into a river or something and Harry Hole is seen like asking about this guy who he didn't even know he was dead going I heard he was a great detective and this other cop is going he was a suicidal maniac like I worked with the guy and he was even worse than you um so we learn now that Val Kilmer was actually about to be fired because he had been stealing things from crime scenes that's never followed And the way that he died is that he went to his hut, which some might call a cabin, and he blew his head off. But Samantha, did he? Did he? Did he, though? Because guess what, everyone? There was coffee beans on the floor of that crime scene. Which Harry Hole immediately notices and is like, why is there coffee beans on the floor? And the other cop's like, I don't know.

who cares like what the cabin was locked from the inside everyone knows the only material you use to make snowman mouths are coffee coffee beans you didn't find that suspicious this guy's floor wasn't perfectly clean and he was like that huge drunk no i did not find that suspicious um yeah so this guy also worked with him and wasn't even sure if he had a daughter which i thought was funny like this guy like so did not give a shit about val kilmer he was like i don't know his wife left him i think he had a kid who cares he was basically like he sucks i never asked um so now we get this is actually probably my favorite part we get terrible cgi of val kilmer's head getting blown off But that's not it, y'all. Because what is placed where his head was mere seconds ago is a snowman head. And the idea that this is in this movie that is taking itself, I have to stress very seriously. Extremely seriously. It's so silly. And it's so R.L. Stine. This is the most fear of streaky shit. I kept waiting for someone to be like, would you like a glass of red wine? Oh, this is the most delicious wine I ever had. Oh, where did you get it? Oh, that's not wine. That's blood. Yes. That's the level you're at when you blow a guy's head off and then replace it with a snowman head.

Oh my god. And then we see coffee beans from the snowman mouth fall on the floor. His hairy hole was right. I'm just going to get you a t-shirt that says beans scatter on it. Okay. So now we're back with the small investigative team where Katrina realizes that Harry Hole went through her files and went to investigate stuff without her when he got on that train. Like, I don't really know why that happened. There's a funny part where he like breaks into her Ikea cabinet and takes her files. Like it's a locked cabinet, but because it's like Ikea, he just like flips it over and like takes out the bottom panel. I was like, oh yeah, that would work. Okay. Anyway. So the reason that he's gone to this place now is he has to go to the hut. Oh, now he has to get on a boat. So we get that mode of transportation. He goes on a boat to the cabin and then he like breaks into the cabin through the roof.

At this same time, the police are alerted that the missing mom's phone was turned on, that they have like a trace on. So Katrina gets the address of where the phone is and goes there. And it's the suspicious doctor's house. Now, you probably don't remember, Samantha. There's a scene that I didn't even put in the notes where we see like two women speaking Russian go into this house and we never see them again. And they're like dropped off by some other woman. And I was really like, what? Did I see that scene? It's really short. It's just like women speaking Russian go into this house. And I was like, whose house is that? Were those the twins? Did I think it was the twins when I was watching this? I don't know. I don't understand. It definitely seems like something you're going to come back to. And then we just like, don't. You know what? It seems like an establishing shot for something that's going to be important.

And then it's just like, again, you never see them or understand, like, why were they at the doctor's house? And actually, I'm not sure we've seen an outside of the doctor's house yet, so you don't even know where they're going. You're just like, Russian will- They could have just left that out. Yes, I don't understand. I don't understand.

Okay, so anyway. Let's see if Liz is crying by the end of the day. Yeah, so that's where Katrina goes. And she doesn't really follow correct procedures. She just climbs over the fence and breaks into the house. And then we see that the phone has been duct taped to this large freezer. It's not like the mom has it and it's alive or whatever. So then Harry Hole is at the hut. And he's going through Val Kilmer's stuff. And that's when we learn that Val Kilmer is Katrina's dad. And that's why she's so invested in this case. And it's because the name on this children's raincoat is Cloudberry. And that's also her password at work. I miss the fucking Cloudberry thing.

Because it's not established very well. I have no memory of this. You have to pay attention to what characters are looking at. There isn't a part where he goes, oh. I mean, I guess it's nicer than hand-holding where he, like, literally is holding the coat and he goes, this was Katrina's when she was a child. That means, like, but it's also, like, not enough. Like, that's not really established well. Oh, my God. Anyway, so anyway, that's what we found out. Oh, and also I was like, surely someone at your work would have mentioned that. But again, the mold, he forgot. Someone was like, oh, that woman you're working with? Yeah, wasn't it so terrible a few years ago when her dad blew his head off? He was also a cop, so we probably, like, would have met him at some conference or something since we all work for, like, Norway police departments. But no, that gossip never made it to him. Or it did, but then the mold erased it.

So now out the window at the doctor's house, Katrina sees snow footprints, which can only be clues. There's never just people walking outside. Yeah, no. There's no one in Norway. There's no people in Norway that live. I'm sure Samantha and I have mentioned this before, but we used to be in this true crime Facebook group, and once this woman was fucking freaking out that there was snow footprints in her yard, and why would anyone be in her yard? It was clearly a murderer coming to kill her. And it was very clearly a guy checking the gas meter, but she would not believe it because her state of paranoia was through the roof. And I just think about it all the time now. It's like, why would anyone be anywhere near my house unless it was to murder me in my sleep? And you're like, I don't know. Someone was getting their missing cat. A kid threw a ball in your yard. There's so many not murder reasons.

This is rich coming from a person that has basically a true crime podcast, but I'm going to say it anyway, which is that true crime is rotting our brains. It's really, really true. Most people are not coming to kill you. I realize the problem is it's hard to tell which ones are and which ones are. I realize that not knowing men is a form of self-defense, but that does not mean that every snow footprint is a clue towards murder. You can open your windows in the summer. I'm just going to say it. You can. You can. You're going to be fine. No, I won't. Okay. Okay. Okay. So anyway, snow footprints. We all know that that means murder.

Snow footprints equal murder. Equal murder. So she goes to the, she follows the snow footprints to the garage and she finds a crime scene very similar to Val Kilmer's, except now it's the doctor. Is that established really? No, but that's who that is. Okay. So she speeds away at this point, I guess to like get more cops. And you see this like startled looking snowman looking off. Like I swear the snowman's like, Oh, like watching her speed off. It's like, honestly, comic. I, why? Why? Why? Why? The whole thing is why. Okay.

Okay, okay. I'm trying to just have this not take 5,000 hours, so we got to keep going. So now J.K. Simmons is alerted that the doctor is dead. Why? I don't know. You tell me. Like, your guess is as good as mine. So they go through that big freezer we saw earlier in the house, I presume, and they find all these dead body parts. So they have the woman's head, you know, with a scarf that they have been looking for. Her head is at this place, along with a bunch of other body parts. There was also a part in the trailer that wasn't in the movie where they had, like, what looked like little putt-putt greens. They had, like, these, like, rows of green carpets, and they were trying to, like, arrange the body parts.

like into people that's not in the movie that is not a movie we never get an explanation about these cut up body parts anyway none of that matters nothing matters um so basically the missing women they were looking for are all dead and they're all at this house and katrina has been put on suspension because she did not follow protocol she should have gone by the house by herself you're not supposed to just hop people's fences and start like going through their stuff so you're not i mean i don't know how they do things in norway but according to this movie no all right then harry hole can immediately tell from the crime scene that the doctor did not shoot himself with a shotgun because the angle is wrong and also who like It's too long, right? It doesn't make sense. But the boss is like, case closed. I don't care about that.

I don't care that we're clearly wrong. Case closed. So Katrina is not answering her phone. So Harry Hole does what any normal person would do and just breaks into her apartment at night, which women love. They love what their coworkers that they've known for maybe a week decide that they get some like say over their safety and how they're doing and they can just break in. So he just bursts in or he kicks in the door. But this woman is a cop. She's trained in self-defense, I guess. She attacks him. So now they're just fighting.

okay i think this is supposed to be sexy she's like half his age i have no idea they never decide who the love interest in this movie is and then it just ends so they're fighting he like gets her pinned on the floor and then they just keep having a conversation like that unhinged behavior they fight she's saying she doesn't believe the doctor committed suicide he's saying i don't believe that either for some reason he's i think it's supposed to be sexy it's so weird but when they finally do get up he's smoking a cigarette like they just banged except that they had a fight and then we're talking while he was like holding her to the ground and she's screaming let me up but then he's smoking a cigarette but his hair is way longer because they shot it a different time like the lighting is totally different it's such fucking Okay, so she tells him that one of the victims was having an affair with J.K. Simmons, which we already know. And she says, oh, that was the last thing Val Kilmer, my dad, was investigating before he died. So the reason she's been suspicious of J.K. Simmons and ended up seeing his, like, boob photographing moment is because she thinks J.K. Simmons had her father killed because he, like, was getting too close to the truth. And that he is, you know, like, has political power. She is of the opinion that the doctor is acting as sort of like a pimp for J.K. Simmons and, like, getting him babes. And that maybe they needed to, like, shut people up.

If that's true, it is never established. And then I just wrote in all caps, dramatic shot of gloved hands making snowball. Okay. This is another one of my favorite moments. Okay. First of all, it's very funny to show like black leather govs making a snowball and it's not being like a slasher movie that takes place in winter. Like I'm supposed to think that's scary. This should have been a slasher movie. I'm just going to say that. Like, I feel like plot of a slasher movie, but it's like acting like it's making fine art. Yes. It's actually like an art piece. Well, yeah, this should have been called like snowball fright.

And yeah, taking place in like a college dorm. I would have forgiven a lot of this shit if it was like unapologetically bad. You know what I mean? Like a slasher movie. In a way, it's more fascinating because it's like they tried, but then just failed so miserably that I can't even figure out what happened. That I'm just like, but how do you not shoot 10% of your scripts? Like, how does that even happen? I'm so confused. Okay. This is also one of my favorite moments. Again, what does this have to do with anything? Katrina is walking down the street. Where? But she passes a snowman that's like a different style snowman. It's almost creepier than the creepy snowman. It has like really big black, like coley eyes.

Like someone put like black coal dust and made two circular eyes that are too big. Right. And she just sees a snowman. I don't even think she knows about the notes because I'm not convinced that Harry Hole has provided any communication to anyone. We haven't seen him communicate anything to anyone. I don't know that she knows that a snowman are important in any way. I don't know that he told his boss about the notes. It's all very confusing. But anyway, she passes a snowman. She walks by it and you go, well, that's not the same kind of snowman. But then the camera pans to the back and on the backside is a hidden second snowman face.

It is the creepy kind that you're supposed to be afraid of. Why? Why is that snowman there? It's not by a crime scene. It's just on the street. They know that she was going to be walking by that random street. Is this killer just everywhere in all of Oslo? I get the impression it's a big place. I'm very confused. Okay. But also that second creepy snowman that's like the conjoined twin on the back doesn't have a coffee bean mouth. So fuck me, I guess. None of this has any...

None of this has anything to do with anything. So okay, Harry Hole is at his mold apartment listening to music and breathing in more mold when his ex just shows up and is like, oh, my son Oleg ran away again. Well, also he's at his friend's house. He's fine. She's kind of just like made up an excuse. She's clearly made up an excuse just because she wanted to come over because we saw her earlier. I didn't even write it down because it was like less than a second, the scene of her being like, where is my son? Because he had ran away.

I know where my son is. He's at his friend's house. But by the time she gets to Harry Hole's apartment, she's like already figured it out like off screen, I guess. So she just comes over and he's like, oh, he ran away. But also he's fine. How about I just like hang out in your mole department? And it turns out that he's mad because he doesn't want to move away with a new boyfriend, Matthias. And then she tells Harry Hole that she misses him, which is honestly truly baffling. Like, maybe it's not working out with this doctor guy, but just like find someone else. It does not need to be Harry Hole.

He doesn't even, like, speak. What is to miss? His constant smoking? Passing out in a ditch, his mold apartment. The only thing he's done well is, like, kind of care about her kid, but in the, like, most deadbeat dad way where he forgot the camping trip. Like, he managed to make it to the hockey game. He took him out for, like, angry ice creams and a bad concert. Like, he made, like, the most, like, low-bar, half-effort effort, but then has done nothing else. And she's just like, oh, I miss you. Why, lady?

get it together discuss that with your therapist okay so now we see katrina at yet another rich person event about whether or not norway is going to have the world cup and i was like oh my god i do not care have it or don't like who cares but jk simmons is supposed to like give this speech about it so she dresses up like a babe and then goes to hit on him and he takes her face picture of her face in this really creepy way where it's like way too close he like snaps the flash like right in her face and is given a key to his room because they're gonna like bone later right she's supposed to go away in the room so now harry hole is on the floor of his fucking mold apartment and is being straddled by his ex who and maybe he's not into i don't really get what happens they're like kind of about to bone right they're like making out or whatever i maybe he's like not hard for some reason From the mole. From the Stachypatras. Okay, because what happens is she's straddling him. They seem like they're going to bone, but then she just suddenly gets up and turns off his music and acts like she's going to leave. And I was kind of like, give it a minute. That's rude. Wow. She's been through this before. Yeah, I guess. She was like, and again, you know, cocaine dick. What's Harry Hole? But is that really? I don't know. Whatever. She's like going to leave. She's like, okay, I clearly came here to bone you, but I'm not going to. And that's when she gets a call from her actual boyfriend.

and he's like kind of mad that she's over at harry hole place which fair enough she's like trying to cheat on him but then she sees the prescription and harry hole's bathroom is from her current boyfriend and she's like pissed and i think really it's just it's just making her think about her own shitty behavior but she's like how dare you go to my boyfriend and get this prescription and it was kind of like he's like what wasn't even my idea like why are you mad oh bitches be crazy so then so then katrina meanwhile is hiding her police tablet in the room where she's supposed to be boning jk simmons to like i don't know catch a confession or something but while she's waiting on the bed we hear a weird wire noise like this And it's that gadget. Oh no. That doesn't, I can't refer to by name because it is not real. That is very frustrating to me. The amount of frustration you have towards that thing not being real is, I don't know why that's funny to me, but it is. I think it's, I wish I could say like, and then he picks up the blah, blah, but I can't. The wire cutty thing. But I can't, I have to say like bookshelfy room because I don't know what it is. Go-go gadget murder wire. Yes, you're right. He picks up the go-go gadget murder wire because he's ready to snowman someone again.

So then she can't find the gun she hid under the pillow because obviously the killer already got it somehow with his like magic killer powers. And she's attacked on the bed and he ejects something behind her ear and then he chokes her with a go-go wire murder device. And then we see him use it to cut off one of her fingers, which he then uses to access her tablet with the fingerprint thing. Because of course. And then delete stuff. Oh my God. Does he cut off any other parts of her like all the other women? No. Just the fingy. She just needed that fingerprint tool. Okay. So now it's the next morning.

maybe i don't think harry holand katrina boned i think not katrina other k name oh my god his acts i don't think they boned right he had a sexually frustrating night of drinking in his mold apartment he wakes up groggy the next day he looks out the window he goes man my cognitive functioning is really being impaired by this mold and he looks down this is again so funny to me this dramatic shot he's at the window he looks down he sees the top of a car obviously everything is covered in snow because it is norway but what is on top of the car is the impression of a snowman oh no Not a snowman. The worst possible type of man. He runs. Actually, he doesn't really run. He kind of slowly, ominously walks to the car to open the door and find dead Katrina inside, missing a finger. Oh, no. Was he in love with her? Is he very sad about this? I honestly have no idea. Harry Hole does not express emotions. His facial expressions don't really change. He has no emotions or thoughts. They are not conveyed to us. He's the worst. It's Necky Botryce, though. I mean. That explains my, like, losing anything.

your explanation is my favorite part of this movie because otherwise I'm like why would you give me a lead character that is not charming has yeah no opinions no thoughts like why am I rooting for him I don't know anything about him I don't even know if he's happy or sad but anyway well I know he hates snowmen I know that much so we know that much Okay, so anyway, he finds her dead body. And then he goes to play this video on her tablet that was not part of the deleted stuff that is her talking to the husband of the missing mom. And he plays this one part over and over that's about going to see the doctor. So now, despite the fact that he does not have a driver's license, he, like, takes his co-worker's Jeep and just starts driving around Oslo. And he goes to see this guy, the husband, and the guy's like, oh, my God, leave us alone. And he's like, no, you told us that that was your wife's doctor and you didn't know him. But when you talked to my co-worker later, you said, how am I supposed to remember what day we saw him? The pregnancy doctor, everyone. He lied about it.

And the reason that he lied is it turns out that the kid that they have, the sweet young daughter that was wearing a donkey mask is not really his kid. Because when they went to go see the pregnancy doctor, he found out that he's shooting blanks and he can't have children. And that's what was causing their marriage to fall apart. Oh, no. Oh, my God. If only they hadn't gone to the pregnancy doctor, everything would be OK. But this wasn't a creepy doctor who's dead who told him that.

It was a visiting hormone specialist. And what I didn't, what I forgot to tell you earlier is that when Harry Hole bumped into his ex's new boyfriend on the train, he was going to a convention about hormones. You know, the hormone convention. Yes. Even though he's a plastic surgeon, he knows a lot about hormones. Okay.

That's important and boring. So now Harry Hole realizes, oh my God, of course, it's my ex's new boyfriend. And that's why he sent me the creepy note that I never told anyone about to pull me into this case, except that's not why he started investigating it. But okay. So he tries to call his ex at the same time the boyfriend comes home from the hormone conference.

And he is acting very fucking strange and talking to her while taking fucking zip ties out of his bag. And she's just standing there. He needed those for the hormone conference. I realize that, you know, it's not just fight or flight. It's much more common to freeze in a weird situation. But I want you to take a moment. And if you are having an eerie conversation, even with your significant other, and he starts to remove fucking zip ties from his bag, you need to move towards the exit. Just, yeah. Just head that way. He can explain to you the perfectly good reason why they're there when you are outside.

or far away he can call you and tell you the perfectly reasonable explanation why he needed to dramatically remove zip ties from his overnight bag all right Because now Harry Hole is breaking into the boyfriend's house. He doesn't care about police protocol either. And, of course, the killer, the boyfriend, now we know they're one and the same, has printed out, like, bio data on each of the female victims and just lines them up on, like, a buffet or a table. Which is, wow, so convenient for people investigating this. I don't know that anyone would do that, but it's like, I'm going to kill this woman, and then this woman, and then this woman. He has it, like, all lined out for you. But the last woman is the ex. Oh, my God, of course it is. We have really met no one else.

Okay. So now he has to go save his ex before the boyfriend kills her. It's time for the final showdown. Also, they bothered to show you that he has the same paper the snowman notes are on and you're like, yeah, but he, I don't need more evidence at this point. He literally has printed out data on each woman that has been killed.

but he also writes creepy notes and is bad at drawing snowmen. Well, case closed. Yeah, exactly. I was, you know, I was on the fence before. You're like, well, maybe let's hear him out. Maybe he's not guilty. So now the killer slash boyfriend, I don't even remember his name. What a great character. He's picking up Oleg from school and he's acting kind of weird. And he tells Oleg, you know, like, it's okay. I didn't know who my father was either. And Harry Hole starts following them and they're going to this like cabin or whatever that this guy has that they were going to move to that Oleg got mad about and ran away.

Did I get that the first time I watched this movie? No. Because it's not established well, like anything. Okay, this is when we learn the most confusing fact of this movie. The boy at the beginning of the movie is the boyfriend. It's not Harry Hole.

I can't really even. So he's sort of how annoying that is. So it's also a little misleading because he's like, he's acting like he never met his father, but he did. He called him Uncle Jonas and he came over every Tuesday and he would quiz him about Norwegian history. Did he know him well? No. Did he know him as a father? No. Was he a total asshole? Yes. But he didn't kind of know him. It still makes no sense. It also doesn't make any sense why, why would he be that child? Like narratively in the straight. We don't get to know him. We honestly don't remember him. He writes a prescription. He's kind of nice to his.

girlfriend's ex-boyfriend on a bus like i on a train and also hate snow i don't know that's not why does he hate snow because because of that because his mom fell into a fight and ice he just as easily hate water i guess snow is water i want to see where he hates water and every time it turns out he has rabies the first rain of the spring makes him kill It's because it makes no sense, Samantha. I don't know. I'll read the book and I will get back to everyone. This will probably happen in like nine years. But eventually I will read the book and I will get back to everyone about the stuff they cut out that would have possibly made this made sense. You have to read books in one through eight first. Oh my God. It could be 18 years. It's the only way. I'll get back to you. Okay. So that's when we find out, oh my God, it was actually the boyfriend, not Harry Hole. Who knows why Harry Hole is so messed up. So now he gets to this house. Katrina's finger is nailed to the door.

Why? To be creepy. So he knows he's in the right place, I guess. Very helpful, honestly, because he could have just been an empty house. How does he know where this guy lives? How does he know the address of this place? I would like to know.

But anyway. He's a brilliant detective. Suddenly, the mold fog has cleared. His brain is sharp as a tack. But anyway, he is at the right house. How he knew that, I have no idea. Because everyone is downstairs. Oleg and the ex are tied to chairs with duct tape in their mouths. And the boyfriend has the fucking go-go gadget wire thing around the mom's neck. And now he has some questions for Harry Hole. Similar to when he was getting quizzed as a child, you might say. And if he gets them wrong, he's going to make the wire tighter. But if he gets them right, it's going to make it looser? And I was like, oh my god, this could literally go on forever.

what if he just keeps getting like one right one wrong one right like this movie could be another nine hours long okay but that's not what happens thank christ the questions are very stupid things like was it wrong for this woman to get an abortion and you're kind of like you didn't even know her why the fuck do you care this is super weird um one of them is like why are you and your ex not together anymore and he was like i did it for them and that was wrong but the correct answer was because i'm an alcoholic and i'm selfish and i didn't have room for them in my life because i just like booze and so that made the wire looser and i'm seriously like this is gonna go on forever it's a wire it's not a gun carrie hole could just pounce on him i don't understand But that would not be dramatic. You're right. Just make this movie end already. We're so close. Okay. So apparently this guy is bitter after seeing a picture of Harry Hole in the newspaper like being decorated for some police thing that he did right. Who knows what that was. But he just like assumes this guy must have a perfect life and is mad about it. Which sleeps in ditches and lives in a mold infested house. Yeah, he's like guy. You got to know him and his life sucks. Let it go. Also, I'm not clear if he started dating his ex just to get to Harry Hole or that's just a wild coincidence.

Honestly, don't know. Okay, so now a fight ensues because, fortunately, this does end. And Harry Hole ends up getting his finger cut off with the go-go gadget wire. And he also gets stabbed in the leg with a fork. He's not that great at fighting, is my takeaway. So now the boyfriend is getting away and the ex is like, kill him! And I appreciate that. And, oh my god, a creepy snowman is seriously, like, looking on as it happens. So now Harry Hole goes out to the frozen lake. This is so funny. Honestly, this is so unintentionally funny. He goes out to the frozen lake.

He doesn't see the boyfriend around. I don't know how, because it's literally a frozen flat ass lake. But he's literally standing there and he's like, gladiator style, like, all right, come on, I'm ready. Come and get me. And he just gets shot.

have been the end of the movie this might be my favorite movie of all time if the hero cop who everyone tells us is great but is clearly not good at his job or anything i just fucking died just fucking died after being like what are you gonna do shoot me and then getting shot yeah but no the boyfriend must also have mold in his apartment because he makes the foolish decision to like come out from where from where bitch it's a flat frozen lake he comes out from hiding to i don't know what just and he doesn't just shoot him again and kill him and win He listens to Harry Hole tell him, like, oh, I sympathize. I understand why you are mad at your mother, but your mother is not the one to blame. It's your father. It would have been a scandal for him to admit he had this son out of wedlock. You're hurting all these women because of your mom, but really, it's your dad who's the villain. And then, in the most luck anyone has ever had in a movie, the killer just literally walks into a hole.

And I guess maybe the name Harry Hole was foreshadowing. Because- You know what? I take everything back. This movie's brilliant. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. This is like the French new wave movie of our time, right? Like this is going to be studied in film schools and people will be like, oh my God, I just don't know how they came up with it. Because the killer is walking towards Harry. Could he just shoot him again? Yes. But he doesn't. He decides to walk forward on this seemingly very frozen lake, possibly the same lake that his mom died in, I'm assuming. That's just an assumption on my part. And then he just like walks into the only hole.

This one perfect circle in the wake. He just walks right into it, falls into it. And then this lake has the current of the ocean. We see his CGI hand reach up and he's just gushed. Presumably, Harry Hole is an officer of the law. You might think, oh, he'll go to the hole. He'll save him. No, he can't. Because he's whooshed away to frozen lake land. He's gone. He's sucked into that hole and looks like a ghost for five seconds and he's gone. He's in the same watery grave as his mother.

It would be funny if it was established why that hole was there. Maybe someone was ice fishing. Man, so lucky. Good job, Harry Hole. And your partner, just a hole in the ice.

Okay, then Harry Hole manages to saunter back to the house. Now, okay, thank Christ, we only have one more scene. And it bugs me so much. So now Harry Hole's back at work. He has a metal finger, which he's tapping on a coffee mug. He's going to irritate the shit out of all his coworkers for years, and there's going to be nothing they can do about it because a serial killer cut it off, right? So he's like, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. And everybody's like, oh, I wish I could complain, but I can't. I'll look like such a jerk. But anyway, a new case has come up, and Harry Hole has turned his life around. He's not that drunk, passed out on a couch that he was. He's listening. He's attentive, and he's ready to take his next case. He must have moved to a new apartment. Yeah, he has a metal finger, and he has a new zest for life.

And possibly, yeah, a new apartment. And maybe he got his dick up. We don't know. We don't know. It almost is setting it up for a sequel, except there's no way anybody is waiting for, like, the next adventure of Harry Hole, unless it's, like, sexual. There's just no way anybody's like, what happened to the detective from The Snowman? Did he get all the clues? Could he have saved her? It didn't exist. Seriously, where were the clues in that fucking movie? Tell me. Why don't I get to see Chloe said he's, like, caught in a bear trap? I want to see that. I seriously was, like, trying to find deleted scenes for this movie, and I was mad I got it.

So that's it. Probably listening to this podcast, you understand the plot of The Snowman better than most people who just watched it. Anyone in the world, I'm pretty sure. You just took a master class on The Snowman. You are welcome. Your papers are due two weeks from today. Double space. Yeah, get in your theories. I want to hear about the stachybotrys. I want to hear about why that hole was in ice. I want to hear about what the hell J.K. Simmons was up to. What was he doing? Look, we have a lot of questions. Why was that never resolved in any way, even as a red herring? Why not?

What is he doing? Why did he make that woman take a topless photo? There are women that will happily do that. Maybe you should take a photo of them. This is just mean. I hope you don't get the World Cup. Liz, honestly, you deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for taking notes on this movie. There are so many, and it took me quite a while, so thank you. Don't say I never did anything for this podcast.

Because I sorted that out. My contribution to this Bons Patreon episode was just being confused. I think you need, but if we had, no, we need that. Because if it's just these notes, it might seem like it almost makes sense. And dear listener, it fucking does not. It makes no sense. I don't know. I still think you're sort of just feel dumb. Like I.

Yeah, you're right that this movie gaslights you. That's the real master of this movie. The tone of it is so serious that you assume it can't just be sloppy. You're like, I'm missing something. And it's like, no, no, it just sucks. But the cameras and filters are so much nicer than a movie this crappy that you're like, it can't be that. This movie isn't called Snowball Fright, which it should have been. It absolutely should have been. The Snowman. Oh my God. Should we have a Patreon episode where we read that R.L. Stein book?

Maybe we could do a book club episode or something. It's got to be so bad. Years ago, I tried to start, I probably have already said this, but I tried to start a Christopher Pike book club because I loved those books back in the day, which are essentially girl's nine books. They're like horror books for girls, for teenage girls. And I love, I cannot tell you how much I loved those back in the day. And I honestly thought they were like profound. But then again, I was like 12. So reading them as an adult, you go, holy shit, these are terrible. They barely make sense. They're clearly just stolen from like the plots of movies I hadn't seen yet, right?

And, yeah, they're just awful. I was like, oh, that's really disappointing. I thought these were so good. But, you know, you know. But I have a suspicion that the R.L. Stine book, The Snowman, is better than this movie, The Snowman. I mean, it's got to be. It would also make more sense to me if that was the actual source material. And they were like, no, no, it's based on a very successful Scandinavian book. And you're like, oh, serious. And it's like, no, it's based on an R.L. Stine book. Gotcha. Amazing. Okay. I'm not sure what we're going to talk about next month.

It may be as unhinged as this. Seems hard to believe that it could be. I think you need a break, though. We should maybe do something a little bit later. Maybe we'll do Beyond Belief. I love doing those. I feel like there's a ton of time. Oh, also Carnosaur. But taking the notes on Carnosaur is going to be almost as much fun. It's going to be just as bad. So let's maybe wait a month to do that.

because trying to sort that out is going to be equally it's that meme of Charlie at the board you know like conspiracy that was me trying to figure out what the fuck is happening in this movie where it's like okay so if we see this character for five seconds then oh that must be like yeah yeah yeah so it's not you Samantha and if anybody else watched The Snowman and didn't understand it because it was the number one movie on Netflix for like two weeks which is so funny to me if you watched it and you went wow that did not make sense is it because I'm high well yes but also the movie didn't make sense it wasn't just that what a life we lead you know truly truly what a road that's brought us here as the snowmen look on oh no so thank you for your money this is what we did with it i hope you feel good about your investment yeah i don't even know what to say i mean that was I'm going to end by saying I was disappointed that I didn't watch this until the spring because I would love, nothing would have been funnier to me than the day I saw this than to make a snowman that was looking into my house. And maybe it'll still be funny by the time next winter comes, which is like, you know, in August here. And I make that snowman with a coffee bean mouth looking into my window. We'll see. Somehow you have to surprise back with it. I don't know how you would do that, but he's got to be like taking the dogs out for a walk or something and he opens the door to see. It's literally a snowman. Yeah. That's my surprise noise, by the way, everyone. The snowman is like making that face like, oh no.

no it has the coffee beans i'm gonna waste the coffee beans making my coffee bean mouth on my snowman yes just looking into what if i do it looking into your window i drive all the way out to your house i don't tell you i'm coming i make the snowman looking at your house i leave my snow prints don't melt somehow yeah and then you're just like you see it and you just go fucking liz that was liz you're like i'm not even scared i'm just annoyed yeah who else yes bye everyone bye