American Movies Can’t Stop Going “Downhill”

Awkward “Force Majeure” remake turns off audiences

There’s a special place in hell reserved for a man who abandons his wife and kids in the middle of an avalanche.

In “Downhill,” the latest release from the newly-minted Searchlight Pictures, Will Ferrell plays this type of man. And unfortunately, the filmmakers trap audiences in this icy nightmare with him.

A remake of the Swedish film “Force Majeure” from 2014, “Downhill” follows a family on an ill-fated ski trip in the Alps. Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Billie and her husband, Ferrells’ Pete, think the excursion will help them slow down from their fast-paced lives and reconnect with their two sons. 

But early on in the trip, during breakfast at an outdoor cafe, a controlled explosion designed to minimize avalanches fails at its job. As the snowy mass surges toward the family, an anxious Billie looks to her husband for reassurance. He says it’s nothing to worry about.

As the avalanche continues to grow, Pete clearly changes his mind and without a word or care for his wife and kids, he flees the scene, making sure to pick up his phone before abandoning his family.

While the family survives the impact, Billie’s frosty glare at her returning husband makes it clear that Pete might not survive the rest of the vacation. 

And for the rest of the film, audiences sit with the couple as they rehash the fateful moment again and again. And again.

The filmmakers, altogether anonymous in their writing and direction, lift the key moments from director Ruben Östlund’s breakout “Force Majeure.” Like its source film, “Downhill” plays out in a series of painfully awkward scenes that make audiences laugh and grimace in equal measure. 

Unlike its source, this new version makes the discomfort feel unintentional.

This Americanized film feels like it was written by someone who watched the dark Swedish comedy, waited a few months, wrote a list of the scenes they remembered and then jammed it in front of cameras. The connective emotional tissue between the key scenes just isn’t there.

As a result, when Billie turns on Pete, it feels like a put-on—like it’s only happening because the movie’s directors told her to feel upset. The otherwise talented Louis-Dreyfus and Ferrell somehow fail to shine through here.

In contrast, when Lisa Loven Kongsli’s Ebba turns on Johannes Kuhnke’s Tomas in “Force Majeure,” it feels natural because Kuhnke played his part so slimily in the intervening scenes that audiences understood Ebba’s almost animalistic anguish over her husband’s absolute ineptitude.

“Downhill” lacks the bite its situation demands. At no point during the arguing do audiences fear Billie will scoop up the kids and walk out of Pete’s life forever. The stakes are simply about how much longer the arguing will continue. 

In “Force Majeure,” however, audiences never know when Ebba might snap and run Tomas right through with one of her sharpened ski poles. 

And the filmmakers display an utter lack of imagination in the aftermath of the genuinely intriguing incident. Pete’s friend, who interrupts the family’s ski trip at Pete’s request, doesn’t bring the argument into his own straining relationship, as in the Swedish film.

The situation doesn’t develop, it just repeats with the poor audience trapped like cavemen in ice.

The filmmakers also lack imagination in terms of technique. Östlund, who followed “Force Majeure” with the Palme d’Or-winning “The Square,” took partial inspiration from awkward videos of grown men crying on YouTube. 

Bringing these single-camera sensibilities to the film, he locked down his camera and in many scenes restricted himself to a single angle, forcing the audience to sit in discomfort along with the characters.

Meanwhile, the cinematography in “Downhill” takes the same shoot first, ask questions later approach as the cops in a “Dirty Harry” picture, covering each scene from dozens of angles and in the process, shooting practically nothing at all.

Still, the film doesn’t completely fail. Though the scenes from “Force Majeure” are neutered, they still contain traces of their chuckle-worthy setup, and a new character, Miranda Otto’s too-personal hotel operator, adds to the comedy.

But perhaps the best part of the movie involves a trip to the safety tower to report the incident, where Billie and Pete meet an officer played by Kristofer Hivju, who played the husband’s friend in “Force Majeure.”

For his brief time on screen, Hivju exudes the comically cold and uncaring brutality that made “Force Majeure” such a blast of refreshing air. If only his character had directed this movie.