Slender Man (Review)

Slender Man Should Have Stayed on the Internet.

In my time as a critic, I’ve probably said that I’ve seen the “worst movie ever” a lot. However, I knew nothing of terrible movies until I sat through Slender Man. I for one was excited to see something based on modern folklore. The 21st-century version of Bigfoot or Loch Ness monster. A viral phenomenon that took the internet by storm. It turns out that the legendary “creepypasta” tale of the scrawny tall man who abducts children is a lot dumber than the internet ever let on.

It’s hard to decide where to start with Slender Man. Most horror movies rely on the stupidity of its protagonists to progress the story forward. Luckily for Slender Man (and unluckily for the audience), it’s got plenty of idiots to help him cross over into our world. The film focuses on four teenage girls who decide to play a modern version of “Bloody Mary” and summon the gangly beast from the bowels of the internet. It goes without saying that things don’t go as planned (when do they ever?) and soon the quartet of teenagers find themselves being hunted by a creature that will either make them disappear or drive them mad. It’s a very white people move, but that’s how these horror movies roll.

How to best describe Slender Man… Ok, you know when you’re watching a horror movie and there’s always that scary moment before the credits that sets up the film to be truly terrifying? Like the first victim is claimed to set up the rest of the movie? Well, it’s like an hour and a half of that. Sure stuff happens in the film, but it doesn’t feel like any of it should be the story that Slender Man focuses on. The entire movie feels like a prelude to something bigger and hopefully more interesting than what we’re actually given. Unfortunately, none of the character or even the monster manages to be worthy of the modest hour and a half run time.

Slender Man sticks to its guns which is it’s biggest downfall. The entire film devotes itself to two motifs to signify the arrival of the malnourished monster, neither of which are actually creepy. While a number of movies have certain sounds or images that will send chills down audience’s spines knowing that the bad guy is lurking in the shadows, Slender Man features distorted bells and the sound of wood splintering. These effects are used to the point where they become more annoying than nerve-racking. This is probably because they feel so desperate to be creepy. In my experience, you’re either creepy or you aren’t and this movie definitely isn’t.

Another painful downfall of this film is that it’s got way too many plot holes and way too little common sense. Even when kids start to disappear in this small Massachusetts town there’s hardly a parent to be seen and the teens are still running around in the middle of the night. In fact, there are really only three adults in the whole movie, which means that the audience is forced to witness teenager logic at it’s finest. Or rather, we’re forced to watch as a middle-aged man (David Birke) delivers his idea of what teenager logic might be. This issue comes up over and over again as the script awkwardly manhandles characters into positions to force the story forward. Not only that, but it’s clear that Birke is completely detached from modern teens. I mean, what teenager goes to the library to use the internet these days? I don’t want to spoil the movie for anyone foolish enough to actually spend money to see it, but the number of completely illogical scenes in it is jaw-dropping.

It’s really hard to tell if the cast of Slender Man is awful or just trying to do the best with what they’re given. It includes the likes of Joey King who has appeared in a number of horror films over the years such as The Conjuring and Wish Upon. However, in this film, she’s just plain obnoxious. In fact. All the characters are more annoying than anything else. This creates a huge problem because as they’re slowly picked off one by one it’s hard not to breathe a sigh of relief that we don’t have to deal with them anymore. Not only that but all the deaths or disappearances or whatever you want to call them are flat out boring.

The worst part by far of Slender Man though is that it comes so close to finding excuses to become a real movie. The characters go investigating online and find an anonymous member in a chat room who survived the creature in the past, but they never go pursuing the person who doesn’t want to talk about the dreaded creature. Then there’s a book written about the paranormal with all sorts of scientific information, but they never go looking for the author. Slender Man teases the audience with the potential of a somewhat decent film but doesn’t have the intelligence to realize what it’s doing. Instead, we’re just stuck with stupid kids doing stupid things in a stupid movie.

I’ve seen some fairly bad horror movies in 2018 from Insidious: The Last Key to The Strangers: Prey at Night. However, Slender Man takes the cake as the worst horror film I’ve seen in recent memory. That’s because it tries so hard to be taken seriously and even has an intriguing premise, but with all that going for it the movie only manages to disappoint time and time again. Part way through I found myself thinking over and over “there can’t be that much left,” which sums up pretty much everything you need to know about this garbage film. All I can’t really say is that there’s no good reason to go and see Slender Man. In fact, you’d be better off just burning $15 and skipping this all together. Not only will it save you an hour and a half, but it will probably be a lot more fun watching your hard earned cash go up in flames than it would ever be watching Slender Man.