Review of Slender Man (2018) by Adam M — 06 Sep 2018

So to put my experience with this movie in context: I have a long history with the Slender Man mythos. I came across some of the Marble Hornets videos back in 2010 or 2011, before the game came out and the character became sort of a meme, and I became obsessed. I poured through every webseries and blog I could find. Searched for forum threads of photoshops and did research on similar historical iconography. I even made my own short film on the subject. The community that was built around this monster was truly fascinating. An instantly recognizable monster whose stories were being built by a disorganized group of horror fans and amateur writers and filmmakers spread out across the internet. It was rapidly evolving modern folklore, and it was really cool to watch. Nearly the whole community seemed to understand what made Slender Man scary, and if they added context or back story, it would always be small and it would always raise more questions. The less you know about him the better. There were no solid rules. Just various accounts of stalking and death. Going back, a lot of this writing is fairly mediocre outside of the bubble of that passionate bunch of people, though some of the stuff still really holds up. One of my prized possessions is the complete series of Marble Hornets on DVD signed by the guys who made it. So with all that being said, I am going to address this film in two different ways: firstly as a film fan, and then as a Slender Man fan.

This is a very bad movie. Just atrocious. Wow. Do not watch it. Damn the writing is just so godawful. This is a movie about a bunch of teenage girls that was written by a middle-aged man and it is painful to watch. They spout weird dad jokes, and the flow of their conversations is so stilted and weird. They talk about leaving town in only the most generic, general ways. When Slender Man gets brought up, of course one of them has never heard of it, and the rest must explain it to her and the audience. They're all incredibly stupid. There's a scene where they all just have to sit still and wear blindfolds, and because the writing is trite garbage, one of them moronically lifts her blindfold and looks straight at the monster. Dumb. The drunken father of one of the girls breaks into his daughter's friend's house and attacks a couple of children and then is back in his home no problems the next day. Ridiculous. The whole set up and plot is basically a straight rip-off of The Ring. They watch a video, and then they are cursed to be killed by a monster. Plot threads are picked up and dropped almost instantly. There's a very pointed line about one girl having a bunch of trophies, and it's spoken with resentment. It sounds like a line you're supposed to remember but this almost conflict is never brought up again. There is a person feeding them information through the internet whose identity is called into question several times that stops being relevant halfway through the movie and they never address them again. The editing is choppy and the dream sequences are generic. The effects are inconsistent, sometimes they're creepy but usually they're in your face and looking awful. The sound design is full of odd choices. There is a sequence where she hears something downstairs and you hear metal clanking to the floor. This is later revealed to not be the monster, but I couldn't help but imagine Slender Man sneaking through the kitchen and accidentally knocking a pot off a shelf and it made me laugh in the middle of a scene that was supposed to be tense. Some of the cinematography was okay. The actors were alright, they probably would have been good if they had anything to work with, the cast really deserved better.

And as a Slender Man fan? What a mess. The writer and the director obviously have no concept of what makes this monster scary. Watching Slender Man videos trains you to watch the background for him. One of the scariest things about the character is seeing him when the protagonist doesn't. In Marble Hornets, the characters would become paranoid about doing things they don't remember and would film themselves when they sleep. Leading to recordings of Slender Man watching them while they lay unconscious. Characters would walk through the woods and you would catch a glimpse of him in the background. It increases the paranoia. He's always watching. In this movie the only time you see Slender Man is when the characters do. It's so blunt force about it. Wouldn't want the audience to miss him. Got to have him front and center. Wouldn't want to leave anything for someone to notice on a second viewing. Well, that's not fair really. I suppose there is one time where we see him and the girls don't; when his shadow sneaks into their room like he's fucking Peter Pan. It looks so stupid, and it's not even consistent with how he normally works. As someone who obsessively researched the Slender lore and got so freaked out by the videos that I would see him out of the corner of my eye next to trees and street poles, I can tell you that just finding the videos is enough to get someone hooked. That's what the community means when they say that he spreads like a virus. You find out about him and you go deeper and deeper and then you share your story and he spreads. Like a disease. The writer of this movie read the virus thing and instead decided to make it that Slender Man is "a computer virus but for your brain." Stupid. Nonsensical. So I suppose he did do some research, they showed a couple of the original Victor Surge images. They have the woodcarving of the skeleton. There's a brief mention of shadow people. But they obviously didn't do much more digging than that. And then there's the videos. They decided to rip off The Ring and make it so that instead of someone just becoming consumed by thoughts of Slender Man after finding videos or blog posts, there's a whole video-based summoning ritual that people do at parties. Sort of a modern Bloody Mary. Then well after that they find all of the drawings that are usually indicative of someone completely corrupted by Slender Man, a "proxy" as most people call it. But that doesn't actually make much sense for the character at that point, so it feels more like an element they knew they had to include but didn't know where to include it. All the videos they watch are strangely highly edited, with a whole lot of cuts and music playing over them and circles edited in to point out ol' Slendy, once again they have to point him out every time he's there because subtlety is impossible for this movie and it doesn't trust its audience to pay attention. And all these videos are posted on some deep web site. Why though? There's no violent content. Why are they not on a YouTube style website? You know, like they are in real life? And to cap it all off. Ever wonder what happens to Slender Man's victims after he takes them? Want to know what happens to these mysterious disappearing people? HE TURNS INTO A TREE AND THEN ABSORBS THEM INTO HIS TRUNK I GUESS.

OKAY. SURE. WHY NOT? FUCK IT.

It's just such a waste of a good monster. Slender Man can be terrifying, Marble Hornets frightened me more than any other horror media back when I first found it. But this movie is not remotely scary. Slender Man can be fascinating, finding all the little clues strewn about writing by dozens of different creators made me feel like I was uncovering some great secret. But the lore in this movie is so blunt force and expository it doesn't spur any curiosity. And ultimately, Slender Man can be great metaphor. He's been used as a way of addressing child abductions, self-medicating, our broken medical system, emotional isolation, mental illness, and fear of the wilderness. In this movie he is just a generic monster in a generic monster movie. He's the Bye Bye Man. He's Annabelle. He's It Follows, but shitty. Don't watch this movie. It's not a good movie.