Review: Let It Snow (2020)

A voice intones “Three years ago was my last happy Christmas” over an aerial view of a Belarusian ski resort. Thus begins Let It Snow, a new Ukrainian/Georgian horror film from director Stanislav Kapralov and co-writer Omri Rose (The Facility). The plot brings to mind films like the Norwegian Cold Prey trilogy and Frozen, (the Adam Green one, not the Disney one). But it also brings back memories of films like Iced and Shredder, with the killer stalking their victims on the slopes.

The film opens with a young girl being struck by a snowboarder who takes off and leaves her to die. The voice we heard was her grandfather. From there we move a couple of years forward, Mia (Ivanna Sakhno, Pacific Rim: Uprising, Can’t Take it Back) and her fiancé Max (Alex Hafner, Extinction) have come from the US to snowboard The Black Ridge. They should have double-checked before they booked their trip, they’re told the ridge is now off-limits and inaccessible. That apparently didn’t stop someone from getting to it a few days before and getting killed, however.

Max finds a helicopter that will fly them out to the ridge. They’ve barely hit the slopes however when a snowmobile comes out of nowhere and hits Mia who had stopped to get some pictures. Alone and injured she must fight the elements and the homicidal snowmobiler if she wants to survive.

Let It Snow has a potentially interesting subplot involving the killer and the struggles within their family over the killings. Unfortunately, that’s never really developed. It’s the same way with the script letting us know that Max is planning to propose on the trip. Or all the flashbacks to them discussing raising a family. I expected that to play a part in the plot. Maybe a contrast with the killer’s family or Mia being pregnant and facing losing her unborn child. But it never comes into play at all.

Much of Let it Snow is Mia stumbling around in the snow. The elements are a bigger threat to her than the killer who is on screen for maybe five minutes. The fact they killer first appears relatively early in the film and the fact they were willing to cause an avalanche to try and kill Mia had me hoping Let It Snow was going to be a good horror/action hybrid. Instead, the avalanche was just an excuse to use some stock footage. And after the first appearance, it’s around the hour mark before the killer reappears.

This could have been another Alone, instead Let It Snow can’t even rise to the bad effects and bare breasts level of films like Axegrinder 2 and Camp Blood 8: Revelations. It could as accurately been called Let Them Snore. It’s currently available on streaming and DVD from Lionsgate.