For every fun activity you can think of, there’s at least one horror movie that’s come along over the years to make you wary of ever doing it again. Take snowboarding, for example. Though they’re not the only two horror movies in the Snowboarding Scares sub-genre, the Norwegian slasher Cold Prey and Adam Green’s survival chiller Frozen are easily the two best examples of just how terribly a fun trip to the mountains can go wrong. Cut from the same cloth, the Ukranian horror film Let It Snow similarly warns of the perils of snowboarding.
If the elements don’t get you, a masked maniac just might.
Directed by Stanislav Kapralov, Let It Snow centers on Mia (Ivanna Sakhno) and Max (Alex Hafner), a couple on Christmas vacation to the snowy mountains of Georgia (the country, not the state) for some good old fashioned snowboarding fun. As good-looking young people in foreign lands are apt to do in the world of horror movies, they ignore all the ominous warnings about the particular ridge they plan on conquering, charting a helicopter to take them to the precise location they’ve been told to stay far away from. Those that have gone missing of late, they soon learn, fell victim to a masked killer who’s now hunting them.
Let It Snow is hardly a body count movie but it does follow the general formula of the slasher flick, beginning with a flashback scene that clues us into the sins of the past that Mia and Max have unknowingly found themselves snowboarding straight into. A little girl was killed on this particular mountain three years prior, we learn right off the bat, run over during a snowboarding accident and left to die by the man responsible. Narrating over top of the flashback is the deceased little girl’s grandfather, letting us know that her family has never been able to move past what happened. You can probably see where this one’s going.
To the film’s credit, Let It Snow wastes little time thrusting Mia and Max into their horrifying situation, as we spend just about twenty minutes with them in the ski lodge before their descent down the mountain is almost immediately interrupted by the mysterious killer. Mia, the more likable of the two, is clearly positioned as the character we’ll be following for the majority of the film, and indeed it’s her struggle that is the focal point of Let It Snow. But even with an hour left in the runtime by the time she finds herself on her own and being pursued by the snowmobile-riding slasher, the film fails to squeeze any real entertainment, suspense or terror out of Mia’s dire situation. Thanks to Ivanna Sakhno’s strong performance she’s a character we’re at least rooting for, but Let It Snow, well, it’s just not up to much.
Even at a mere 80-minutes in total, Let It Snow is a slow drag to the finish line, with only brief suggestions of something a bit more entertaining from the material. The high point of the film comes when the killer triggers an avalanche with an explosive device, forcing Mia to use her snowboarding skills in order to outrun the forces of nature; and what follows in the wake of that action-horror intensity is the closest the film comes to actually being a little bit terrifying. But it’s a standout sequence in large part because it’s really the only standout sequence, with further interactions between Mia and the killer being put on the back-burner in favor of documenting Mia’s struggles with the elements. The killer has a tendency to disappear for large portions of the film, robbing the proceedings of any real suspense or excitement. And whenever it seems like business is about to pick up, well, it hardly ever does. Potentially intense moments are frequently ended with an unceremonious smash cut to black. Instead, Kapralov seems intent to focus on Mia trudging her way through the snow.
And for the most part, it’s as much of a slog to watch as it is for Mia to endure.
Most everything about Let It Snow is under-cooked, from the relationship between Mia and Max to the larger mythology that the two find themselves tangled in. Kapralov interrupts Mia’s fight for survival at multiple points to show us flashback insights into the relationship, which only ever reiterate information that we’re already privy to; they love each other, Max is on the verge of proposing, and they hope to have kids someday. These flashbacks only seem to even be in the movie to pad out the runtime, and the chemistry between the two just isn’t strong enough to invest us in their romance. Given how much the film relies on how much we care about the couple and their future, the whole thing falls quite flat.
As for the killer’s storyline, it doesn’t fare much better. There’s an interesting family struggle at the center of the whole nightmare, without giving too much away, but it’s as half-baked as everything else going on in this one. We already know right off the bat where the whole thing is going and it never gets much more compelling than that, with voiceover dialogue often filling in the blanks in most uninteresting fashion. And there’s not even a final confrontation to speak of between killer and survivor, as Kapralov instead chooses to bring his movie to a close with a limp cliffhanger that’s only resolved by a post-credits scene. It’s a baffling note to go out on, playing out as if he just didn’t know where to go with the story.
The on-location scenery is beautiful, but there’s little else to recommend here.
Lionsgate’s Let It Snow hits DVD on Tuesday, September 22.
