Slender Man: #RealMenHaveCurves, #RealMoviesHavePlots
By: Dalton Cooper
I am offended over how bad this movie is. This movie insulted me. I hesitate to even call it a movie. “Slender Man” is what happens when the screenwriter, director, editor, and producers do not care about the final product. “Slender Man” is what happens when a production company realizes that they have the film rights to a popular character after that character winds up in the news. “Slender Man” is what happens when you waste every single opportunity to make something good. “Slender Man” is awful.
I am honestly at a loss of where to start here. I guess I should start about the things I liked. The lead actresses (Joey King, Julia Goldani Telles, Jaz Sinclair, and Annalise Basso) did a good job saying words. Javier Botet was a good casting decision to play Slender Man. That’s about it.
Everything in this movie is just wrong. Seriously, everything from visual effects to editing isn’t just bad, it is objectively wrong. Let’s go through the “plot”.
“Slender Man” centers around four friends who watch a YouTube video to summon Slender Man, a mythical being who lives in the woods, because they heard some boys were watching the video. After watching the video, one friend goes missing during the school field trip to a graveyard (do you get it, kids, it’s foreshadowing), and the other three girls must find out how to get their friend back.
So right off the bat in this movie, every single horror movie cliché is hit as though the director (Sylvain White) had a checklist on set that Sony mandated he follow. The very first scene features the character Katy say “I want the demons inside of me”. Well, we as an audience know she’s dead. Sure enough, she is the character who gets taken by Slender Man. This movie also takes place in Horror Movieville, USA. What I mean by this, is that this is the same town as every hack horror movie where the characters leave school at the end of the day and it’s bright and sunny. But by the time the characters get to their friend’s house, it is pitch black night time. Also, no parents or police exist in Horror Movieville, USA. So, as the kids, actual literal high school children, start to disappear, nobody cares. They just go “poof” and I guess the police are like “I want to help find the missing girl. But the script says I have to stay at the station and eat more donuts”. These girls stop attending school and there isn’t a single call to the parents asking where the students are? If I had a doctor’s appointment in high school and was gone for an hour, my parents got a phone call about it. The same parents who checked me out of school to get me to the doctor. But that doesn’t exist in Horror Movieville, USA. Because logic is dead, and so is this movie’s credibility.
Honestly, the thing about this movie that makes my blood boil the most is the missed opportunities. There were decent ideas here, even a couple of clever shots. But they never follow through on those ideas. I am going to go more in-depth on my podcast because the best way to explain this is verbally, but just know there are more wasted chances to be great than a Cleveland Browns depth chart.
I mentioned in my review of “Truth or Dare” that I laughed out loud in the movie theater during a scary part. In this movie, I wasn’t the only one laughing. The whole theater burst into hysteric laughter during a hallucination scene where our hunky male (crowbarred in) love interest’s face gets twisted up and he ends up having this super derpy orgasm face that is played up to be horrifying and intense, and it just falls flat on its face. Honestly, the whole scene is put together as though the editor had a seizure while moving the footage around on Adobe Premier Pro, only to have the director walk in, see the final product and proclaim, “My God…it’s brilliant!”
I am honestly physically disgusted the more I think of this movie. I love the character of Slender Man, I love the old Slenderverse web series, I love the old “Slender: The Eight Pages” video game, I do not love the official Slender Man movie. In fact, I hate “Slender Man”. I hate it more than I hate any other movie I’ve seen this year. I have seen Ted Nugent hunting shows with more thrills and intense moments. I have seen more excitement come from a crowd of residents at an old folks’ home, where people dump their loving parents to die. I have seen more energy from an amateur golf tournament. I have seen better CGI and visual effects in porn films (hey man, if it’s a film, I’ll review it). I have seen more sincerity from a Hooter’s waitress pretending to be into the customers, so she can get a better tip.
Honestly, I was going to give this movie a 3 or a 4, until the previously mentioned derpy orgasm scene occurred. After that happened, I dropped the score down to a 1, and “Slender Man” is lucky I am giving it a 1. This is like watching Petronius Maximus accidently leave the gates of Rome open for the Vandals, except this time it was Sony throwing open the gates for garbage to continuously flow out of their back lot. 1 out of 10. I hate this movie. Go watch Marble Hornets for free on YouTube instead.