On reading some of the reviews for the 2013 movie Snowpiercer, it was easy for me to assume that the movie would not have been any good since it was heavily criticised by a lot of people. However, after watching it for myself I strongly agree that while it did have its flaws, it was the kind of movie that I had enjoyed enough to watch again. In my opinion it is one of the most underrated movies that I have seen in a very long time.

The situation in Snowpiercer is one that I have never seen in a science fiction movie. It is set in a post-apocalyptic time after the entire earth has gone into an ice age after an attempt to counteract global warming through climatic engineering has gone wrong. Thus the global temperature has become such that it is too cold for anything to live outside for more than a few minutes. The only inhabitants left on the face of the Earth have become the inhabitants of "Snowpiercer", a massive train that was engineered to infinitely circle the expanse of the globe.

However, the train also has its own class system where the wealthiest of its occupants inhabit the front of the train and the poorest inhabit the tail. The underprivileged become so badly treated in Snowpiercer that the inhabitants in tail begin planning a massive revolt with the aid of a mysterious person who is sending messages from the head.

One of the things that I didn't really like about the movie was that it has an abrupt start, and so it's a little hard to figure out what exactly is going on at first. This is even despite the fact that there was a brief introduction to the background of the train's origin.

There is this scene where the soldiers who are guarding the tail of the train call for an experienced violinist and an elderly couple are beaten into separating, because they would rather take the husband instead of just both of them. This raised a lot of questions because I wanted to know mostly why they needed the violinist.

One of the the elements of the story that I really loved was the feeding of the protein blocks to the train's poorer residents. I thought that this really showed just how much the elite class mistreated them to the point where they weren't even eligible to receive proper nourishment, and they were always hungry as a result. What is even worse was when it was discovered that the protein blocks that they were feeding the poorer class was actually the grounded and processed form of insects such as roaches.

I also loved the way that some of the actors portrayed their characters. One of them in particular was the actress Tilda Swinton who played the role of the character Mason. I actually did not recognise her at first when I saw her in her costume. However, I thought she did an extremely well job of portraying an entitled, arrogant and frigid member of the higher class.
I also loved the twist at the end of the movie even though I had an idea that the storyline might have gone in that same direction from my first few minutes into the movie. At the end of the revolt, Snowpiercer has crashed and its only known survivors are a teenage girl and a little boy, but their surprise is great when they see an adult polar bear walking on a snowy mountain for the very first time. This would have meat that the train's inhabitants could have disembarked years ago and started new lives.

I think that a lot of people who love science fiction movies might actually enjoy watching this one. The visual effects might not be as present as it is in certain movies such as interstellar and Edge of Tomorrow, but it's the storyline that makes it so interesting.