October is here and with it, the Halloween vibes. Or so it should, but this year has been a weird rollercoaster and whenever we blink, another month has gone by. For that reason, as of October 1st, I started reading spooky books to see if I would get into the season’s mood. But which book did I pick up then?
In the first week of October, I picked up The Snowman by Jo Nesbø, a Norwegian psychological thriller, that got a Netflix movie three years ago. When I saw the movie while browsing Netflix’s home page, I knew that I had to watch it. Sadly, as soon as people started watching this film, critics and backlash started rising. Being aware that my father had read the book years prior and really enjoyed it, I found his copy and decided to give it a try. Fortunately, I was not at all disappointed with this novel as it has the right amount of creepiness, suspense, and comedy in it.
The story follows Harry Hole, a Norwegian detective who’s obsessed with catching serial killers because he took a course at the FBI. Years ago, he received a letter signed The Snowman and in the contents of the letter was an uncommon reference to the serial killer he caught in Australia. He is a very unreliable character as he’s an alcoholic with an obsessive personality. We follow him and his colleagues on the hunt for a sadistic man who murders married women with children, leaving a snowman behind to let the detective know that it’s him.
You’ll encounter many plot twists and it gets you guessing the identity of the snowman many times throughout the book’s 500 pages. I’m happy to say that I called one of the plot twists, but the biggest one I didn’t see coming at all as the details are given little by little and some passages are very vague and mysterious.
At times, it really feels like a guessing game even though Nesbø’s description and storytelling are phenomenal. I’m definitely going to pick up more of his novels because this book was a fun, creepy, and very thriller ride. If you’re a big crime and thriller junkie like me, you should also pick up his books. I promise you that you won’t be able to put them down.
But what about the movie? In 2017, a movie of the same title was loosely based on Nesbø’s novel, and, right away, I’ll say that I didn’t like it. Although I understand that the movie was not an adaptation, it was still very disappointing to see the number of changes they made to both the plot and the pacing of the story.
To cite some changes that were made, some characters’ genders and names were different and there were character omissions, too. In addition to that, a few parts of the plot were not in the “right” chronological order. But the worst part of it all was how they changed the way the serial killer killed his victims and how things seemed to happen too easily. Maybe that’s also a product of how unnecessarily fast-paced this movie was. Overall, I did not enjoy it.
My favorite part of the novel was the suspense and multiple perspectives. Sadly, I’m sure that it would be hard to incorporate it into the film. But after giving the book a 5-star review, it was very underwhelming for me to watch the movie. This is easily one of the worst productions based on a novel that I have ever watched. However, I do think that if you were to watch it without reading the novel, then you might actually enjoy it. Who knows?
What’s the takeaway? If you are a bookworm, like me, I would always advise you to read the books as they’re generally better than any of the adaptations they get. Especially when it comes to such a thrilling work of art that is The Snowman by Jo Nesbø.