Snowpiercer

Let's start with the positives, I think the concept is cool.

Now that that's out of the way... THIS MOVIE WAS STRAIGHT GARBAGE.

I'm really going to struggle to squeeze every criticism I have into this review because it was a constant barrage of dumb shit as I watched it.

Even from the opening credits, I'm left perplexed. They show off the various production companys' credits twice for no reason and they do some weird transition with the movie logo and I couldn't figure out what effect they were trying to accomplish.

Right away we open on the "lower class" citizens of the Snowpiercer which serves as the setting of the movie. It is The Day After Tomorrow outside, and everyone's cooped up on a train that is constantly moving for no adequately explained reason. They briefly mention that the front of the train collects water from the ice it breaks through? But how does that sustain a train? Why is that the only means by which you can collect water? How is this train even fueled? Never answered. And the more you notice the lack of beds and storage and other inessential amenities in the rest of the train the more you realize the writers just didn't give a shit.

So the lower class is heckled by Hunger Games-style villains, which is my way of saying they are too unrealistically evil and cartoony to take seriously. I will say that I appreciate the minimal creativity they took to have an organic means of punishment, whereby they grease up the arm of a misbehaving passenger, fit him with an arm size washer, and seal it outside of the train through a hole until it freezes. That's pretty plausible, I like that.

That said, it takes 30 minutes of melodramatic ******** for the "siege" to kick off where the people at the back of bus say "**** this" and decide to push on through the train to get to the mysterious conductor "Wilford". Once again, I'm momentarily re-engaged by the creativity of having the characters construct a long line of tubing and quickly wheel it through a serious of timed doors to wedge them open, I didn't how they were going to clear that 3-4 second window, and that surprised me, so again, props.

But this is where props end because after this point I am just flabbergasted at everything that happens. The pacing is CRAP. I feel like it takes 30 minutes for the movie to rev up and it only lasts a couple minutes before it smashes to a halt again for them to drag out a LONG character introduction of some Korean dude who doesn't have subtitles and only occasionally uses a translation device. This culminates at the end of the movie in a looong monologue, in Korean, complete with flashbacks, that I cannot understand at all.

Was I supposed to get anything out of that? Because I didn't.


The real question, once the lower class people at the back escape their cots and steady supply of water and "protein blocks", is what are in the cars ahead of them? How does this quasi-religious noble class live and how are they situated as compared to the engine, or the "water room", or the inevitable armory where all the security guys work?

Well the first couple cars seem to just be security checkpoints and some beds, so I guess that's where the security guards at the back sleep? Then that's, for some reason, bookended by "protein block" car where it's discovered that they're grinding up a massive supply of beetles to make the protein blocks. Where do these beetles come from? Never explained. Also **** you for asking questions.

You don't ask questions around here. This is a serious movie. How dare you rub two brain cells together and even suggest something here may be silly?

So anyway, the next car is entirely empty except that it's full of guys, all wearing eyeless balaclavas, holding axes, and trading around a single fish to wet their axes on to look threatening.

It is at this point that the movie completely jumps the shark and continues to jump the shark over and over again.

NO explanation for why they're wearing eyeless balaclavas, or can still see, OR how they have this sudden supply of fireaxes... WHO CARES they're going to stand there and menace you with a fish for a bit before they start hacking.

It is around this time that I notice that the choreography isn't good enough to communicate how the main character ever manages to get a nightstick or axe, but he does. Also the Korean dude has a daughter who's clairvoyant for literally no reason. It only comes up a couple times, it has ZERO payoff, and it needlessly introduces the only supernatural element there is into this movie.

So there's a big axefight going on, it's all in slow-motion, and that makes it all the more jarring when a hit obviously doesn't connect and the inappropriately stereotypical meat-slapping and SHING sounds effects kick in.

And you're TRYING to stay immersed in the movie, you're TRYING to ignore the fact that all of the bad guys have purposely blinded themselves with eyeless balaclavas, but that's when the main character SLIPS ON THE SINGLE ****ING FISH. The one and only fish that existed for literally no other reason than for the bad guys to pull out of their ass and bloody their axes with!

How can I NOT laugh at that!? That is so unintentionally funny! This clearly isn't meant to be a comedy but it's so ******* stupid!

Eventually they do some darkfight shit and the main character manages to get the Bitch-In-Charge as a hostage. Then it transitions to Ollivander from Harry Potter walking through and bemoaning all the dead people before cutting back to the main character who doesn't have the lady hostage anymore!

How do you just ignore where she is!? She's important!

Next they find a greenhouse car, which makes sense, then an AQUARIUM TUNNEL, yeah sure. Why the **** not. And yeah, let's have a sushi bar at the end. Let's also insult the audience by poorly explaining the concept of a closed ecosystem.

We KNOW it's a closed ecosystem, we also know the TRAIN is a closed ecosystem, but that only begs the question how you manage to have an entire SLAUGHTER CAR full of dead chickens and what looks like cow! Where did they come from, genius!? This train has been running for 17 years and they're still here?

Then of course we have the SCHOOL car, you know, for elementary school, where the teacher shows way too much gum and is way too excited to indoctrinate kids into hating poor people and worshiping the "Divine Wilford". Real subtle.

Then some dude rolls in with a wheelbarrow full of eggs.

...where the **** are we getting eggs from now, Mrs. Closed Ecosystem?

But just as you're distracted by all the bright colors, smiles, literal song and dance, they suddenly WHIP OUT UZIS FROM THE EGGS AND START BLASTING!!!

I could not make this shit up if I tried. This is the worst Easter ever.

Apparently amid this sudden gunfight the same thing happens to the crew at the back of the train, which reminds me: Why in the actual **** did half a dozen people go alone instead of which the numbers they started with? Was this ever explained?

Also, why was anyone left alive between the forward group and the back group? Why was anyone left with weapons? WHERE DID THE EGGS COME FROM???

Somehow, after the axefight, the characters separated along a linear span of train cars and inexplicably several people managed to sneak in between them with GUNS SMUGGLED IN A WHEELBARROW OF EGGS. This is complete and utter clowshoes at this point.

The kids in class magically disappear during the shootout and you never see them again. We see exactly ONE cabin that may be considered a living space after this, but that is it.

Finally we see the rich people sitting around and nothing happens.

Next is the SPA car. Which serves only as a shootout with one of the bad guys that got behind them with a gun somehow. The main thing that bothers me about this scene is they totally rip the knife scene straight from Saving Private Ryan. That's a memorable haunting death scene, and they squirt out a flippant copypaste of it here.

They pass through the Rave Car and the Drug Car. You really gotta wonder how they manage to keep peace on the train when seemingly ALL of the security is at the back of the train with a literal kid's classroom between them and the drug addicts. This "closed ecosystem" really doesn't make any ******* sense.

Now at this point basically every other notable character except the main character and Korean #1 and #2 have been shot or stabbed to death. And I am so beyond caring. NOTHING they could do could surprise me at this point.

So naturally this is when the main character confesses to the Korean guy that he's a cannibal and he thinks babies taste best.


Not even kidding, what a great main character.

What's even weirder is his backstory where he explains that he was about to eat a baby when another character stopped him, cut off his own arm with a knife and said "eat this instead". How on earth does this interaction even happen? You can just whip out a knife and lop your arm off willy-nilly, which is why I can't help but imagine the unfathomably bizarre and awkward pause between the main character goin' "Imma eat this baby", and the other guy saying "hold that thought" then standing there as he takes 20 ****ing minutes (or however long it would take) to carve through all the muscle, cartilage, and bone in his own arm, only to hand it over and say "eat this instead".

Right, yeah. That definitely happened.

Finally they make it into the engine room, Korean Guy just wants to bail the train for whatever reason, Wilford apparently toils away at a grill with no indicate that he even sleeps anywhere. They have a lazy-ass "wow, you know I intended for you to die, but you really impressed me, so why not be a bad guy like me" monologue, they spend way too long teasing the possibility that the main character would do it, but no, the cannibal is righteous man, he'd never do that.

They finally find one of the kids security took working away under the floor panels and the main character decides to rip his arm off by reaching directly into the gears to... touch him? "Timmy" is clearly intact where he is, I should think you try and remove him by the same means he entered, which evidently doesn't require sacrificing an arm.

There's a lot of people losing arms in this movie.

So after the Cannibal monologue, after the Korean monologue, after the Big Bad monologue and all that ********...

...suddenly the ravers from the previous car show up to pick a fight! WHERE THE **** WERE YOU!? We literally walked right past these ****ers and they waited nearly an entire 3rd Act to go "Eh! Let's kill those guys!"

BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH, Big Bad's final words are "Nice", train crashes and omigosh a polar bear there is life outside after all!

Credits.

What a ****awful movie.

You know I could easily see a movie like this done well, maybe in the style of Speed, where the lower class at the back of the train need to fight their way to the front to learn the train is only sustainable by child labor by design. Like, there could definitely be a good movie in that. This is not that. This is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory level ********.

((I wrote this before I realized there are literally Willy Wonka crossover fan theories for this movie, what the ****.))

Just some hilariously tone-deaf screenwriting, some totally underwhelming twists, and for a movie that seems most appreciated for it's setting, has completely nonsensical worldbuilding.

I had no idea this was going to be so bad. Please do not put this garbage in Frostpunk. Trains are cool, this is not.