REVIEW: ‘The Snow Sister’ Tackles A More Haunting Holiday Approach

While the holidays are typically a joyous time, for some, like the main character Julian (Mudit Gupta) and his family in Netflix’s Norwegian release, The Snow Sister, it is a time of grieving. The presence of those lost lingers with the reminder that the year is almost over. But it is not something we can avoid, or else we run the risk of never truly being able to move on. Through his chance encounter with the strange Hedvig (Celina Meyer Hovland), both Julian and the audience learn to confront grief and death head-on rather than bury it. Reaching that lesson in this slow-paced magical drama takes a while. Holiday spirit and all.

In The Snow Sister, Christmas Eve is rapidly approaching. It should be a happy time, especially with Julian’s birthday falling on the same day. But this year is different for Julian and his family. Rather than having the house beautifully decorated or invoking any sort of good cheer, the dark gloom of grief has settled over the now family of four.

The death of Julian’s elder sister haunts the family, and rather than talk about it, Julian’s parents prefer to avoid the subject, trapping the family in a stasis. The sadness still exists in Julian’s world and Julian’s life even if the grieving family doesn’t confront it. A heartfelt drama about a family’s grief brings some twists and comfort.

It seems guaranteed that Christmas will never be the same again. But one day, Julian meets the happy and quirky Hedvig, a young girl around his age who is incredibly obsessed with Christmas. Although Julian tries to push her away from the get-go, he eventually warms up to her.

Not long before a glimmer of hope sparks in the young boy: Maybe Christmas can be salvaged after all. But soon, strange things start happening around Hedvig, sparking Julian to start questioning who the girl really is and why a strange old man keeps appearing around her home.

The Snow Sister is different from your normal holiday film. 

Geared towards older children, The Snow Sister takes its time in telling its story, introducing topics and subtle moments of horror that might go over the heads of those closer to Julian’s younger sister in age. This story, while a Christmas tale, doesn’t follow the more American variation of holiday good cheer. Instead, director Cecilie Mosli and screenwriters Maja Lunde and Siv Rajendram Eliassen tap into the more traditional Christmas story, where ghosts frequent the characters’ lives, and a sense of fragility lingers in the air.

The weight of this bears down on little Julian’s shoulders as he tries to navigate his parents’ denial and step into the shoes of the eldest child. Left without any guidance to navigate his own grief, he is lost. Mudit Gupta portrays Julian’s weariness as hardwon and familiar to anyone who’s grappled with loss. It almost makes it easier to understand why he’d push Hedvig away, played with a chipperness that progressively and intentionally becomes forced by Celina Meyer Hovland.

In fact, Hovland’s take provides an interesting example for the audience of how positivity and cheeriness aren’t always good things. Despite her almost magical elven-like appearance, with rosy cheeks and bursts of energy, Hedvig avoids questions that might have inconvenient and unpleasant answers. This behavior, and how Hovland is directed to portray that in The Snow Sister, may provide parents with a way to broach the discussion of avoidance with their children. And for adults, it provides an example of behavior we ourselves might gloss over.

It is in these emotional extremes that the film’s lesson becomes easily digestible. Avoiding reality, regardless of how the approach is taken, is not the solution. Julian (and the audience) sees a variety of examples of why this is the case. But avoidance does nothing but exasperate and prolong the issues at hand, which is something The Snow Sister outlines incredibly well in a subtle way without beating us over the head with it.

The Snow Sister does require patience, but it pays off.

That said, The Snow Sister is a slowburn of a tale that requires some patience from the viewer. Thankfully, Gupta and Hovland are delightful onscreen, with the scarier moments providing a spark of adrenaline to liven things up. But, this is a film of slow rolling ups and downs that, more often than not, loses its momentum by residing mostly in the quiet.

Elements in The Snow Sister may remind viewers of Snegurochka or The Snow Maiden, with the proverbial Ded Moroz (Father Frost) always lingering nearby. If you’re familiar with the folklore, you may guess the film’s overarching mystery before the reveal. However, that doesn’t take away from the importance of its subject. It’s okay to grieve, but it’s not okay to avoid the truth, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Eventually, we can’t avoid the truth any longer and have to move onward, even if it means acknowledging the end.

With its lulling, slower pace and subject matter, The Snow Sister might not be the holiday movie families want to add to their must-watch list. However, it is refreshing in its embrace of the haunting traits of more somber traditional Christmas storytelling. Mudit Gupta’s performance captures the complexities of a young boy grappling with grief, making it hard to look away and, instead, inspires hope that he’ll be okay in the end.

The Snow Sister is streaming exclusively on Netflix.