A film by an Oscar-winning director with 94% on Rotten Tomatoes will soon be removed from Netflix. Snowpiercer is a 2013 post-apocalyptic action thriller film based on the French climate fiction graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette.
The film was directed by Bong Joon Ho and written by Bong and Kelly Masterson. The recipient of numerous accolades, Bong has won three Oscars, two BAFTAs, and five Asian Film Awards. In 2017, he was included on Metacritic’s list of the 25 best film directors of the 21st century.
Snowpiercer stars Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Go Ah-sung, John Hurt, and Ed Harris. It takes place aboard the Snowpiercer train as it travels a globe-encircling track, carrying the last remnants of humanity after a failed attempt at climate engineering to stop global warming has created a new Snowball Earth that is -120C. Evans stars as Curtis Everett, leader of the lower-class tail-section passengers, as they rebel against the elite of the front of the train. Snowpiercer received critical acclaim and appeared on many film critics’ top ten lists of 2014 after its international release, with praise for its vision, direction, and performances, particularly by Evans and Swinton.
Film review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 94% of critics gave the film a positive rating, based on 267 reviews with an average score of 8.1/10.
The website’s critical consensus states: “Snowpiercer offers an audaciously ambitious action spectacle for filmgoers numb to effects-driven blockbusters.”
Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 84 out of 100, based on 38 reviews from mainstream critics, indicating “universal acclaim”.
Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly gave the piece an “A” rating, stating: “Snowpiercer sucks you into its strange, brave new world so completely, it leaves you with the all-too-rare sensation that you’ve just witnessed something you’ve never seen before … and need to see again.”
A. O. Scott wrote, in his review for The New York Times: “Planetary destruction and human extinction happen a half-dozen times every summer. It’s rarely this refreshing, though.”
Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out New York scored the film five out of five stars, writing, “Sprung from a 1982 French graphic novel and bearing its era’s trickle-down tensions, Snowpiercer is a headlong rush into conceptual lunacy—but you’ll love it anyway.”
Snowpiercer is leaving Netflix on November 30, but the spin-off series is still available. Released between 2020 and 2024, there are four seasons with 40 episodes
It stars Jennifer Connelly and Daveed Diggs, among others, and takes place in a rebooted narrative of the film, with events on the train starting about seven years after the global catastrophe.
