Where do I begin? I had such high hopes for this movie. The premise is great, the cast looked good and while I was trying to figure out just what the hell was going on in the first 30 minutes of this movie, director Sylvian White gave me absolutely no reason to care about any of them when the ish hits the fan in the second act of the movie.
Based on the internet meme Slender Man follows a group of four girls who live in a small town that they hate. Wren (Joey King0, Hallie (Julia Goldani Telles), Chloe (Jaz Sinclair) and Katie (Annalise Basso) research the Slender Man vide after taking a bet with a bunch of guys from their school and watch it. Much to their surprise they discover that Slender Man is real and comes to take each of the girls one by one.
There is so much that is wrong with this movie that I don’t even want to give it any more time, it’s acting is mediocre, the premise while great, lacks any real depth. I have seen a lot of films with one dimensional characters, but this one really takes the cake. There is nothing endearing or even remotely interesting about the characters. A good horror movie gives you at least some insight into its characters making their death and torture even more frightning because you care. This did none of that whatsoever. The execution of the premise is awful with Slender Man not actually appearing to be anything more than a carbon copy of Samara from The Ring. Last years Rings proved this formula no longer works. The scares are barely there and occasionally shows some visual inventiveness with trees and sounds of the forest but that’s about as far it goes. Fans of horror movies will find no solace in this shallow cash grab, even fast food millenials will just be plain bored with a story that doesn’t even entertain or at a lot of times make sense.
The only thing I can give it points for is the visual inventiveness. Slender Man is creepy and the tone and cinematography used in the forest scenes with the creature blending in the trees and is a callback to old school horror films. It was a brave choice to include this, partciularly when the story is so bad, that 2-3 scenes in the movie offer up the best parts.
Overall Slender Man is a mess, don’t waste your money. Instead watch the Slender documentary available on Amazon Prime Video which follows the documentary story of two young girls who slashed their friend because Slender Man told them to. It’s a lot more scary and interesting than this dribble.
Avoid at all costs!
