Director: Sylvain White
Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Duration: 93 minutes
Slender Man (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
Slender Man is a character that was very popular back in 2012 when an open-source video game was developed with the eerie character in the lead. While the character already dates from 2009, it was only properly discovered because of the video game that lured fans of the horror genre, streamers and people who were challenged to play it in the dark alike. Even though the hype has passed for years now, for some reason someone thought it would make a great idea for a movie, without actually following the source material of the game. True, the latter lacked a certain story value, but it did have a precise setting that worked for the game and made it so popular. Movies based on games are often quite shitty, and once again this new-age proverb did not disappoint.
The movie starts off with a group of four girls spending a night together, which seems to be the common thing to do in American cinema. Wren (Joey King), Hallie (Julia Goldani Telles), Chloe (Jaz Sinclair) and Katie (Annalise Basso), are doing random stuff, when all of a sudden they come across stories about ‘Slender Man’, which is described pretty much in the same fashion as an urban legend. The girls decide to follow the steps to summon him, and while it first seemed like a harmless thing to do, it would soon start to haunt them when all of them have strange visions about the ghastly entity. Even then, while it first comes across as jitters, things take a turn for the worse when Katie goes missing.
While the story of the movie itself does the trick and is sufficient enough to build something around it, the flow of the movie is completely messed up, making this a snorefest rather than an intriguing horror experience. The movie has too many slow and dead moments to keep the user interested in what is going on, making you lose interest after a while, only to ignore the sequences that are actually perfectly executed. The quality of the movie constantly dips, only to be alternated with visually impressive scenes, which would have elevated the movie if they were used more throughout the movie. We do feel that the Slender Man persona wasn’t really necessary for this movie, and that it could have done with any other creepy character in the lead. Of course, something familiar draws the crowds in, hoping it would not be another generic horror experience. The movie shows it’s capable of delivering very interesting scenes, but it falls flat as a whole. Another gripe is the fact that the ending is not only predictable but also crappy.
Overall the acting performances in the movie are actually fairly decent. The four leading girls/women all have a familiar face, and they have actually played (minor) roles in a fair amount of famous movies and series before, but (almost) never as one of the leading roles. As leads in this movie the girls perform quite well, especially seeing what they had to work with. When the writing is somewhat horrid, as well as the flow of the movie falters time and again, they can only do so much. For their acting we can only commend them, and we hope that we can see these lovely ladies in the lead in more movies, if only to rinse out the aftertaste of this movie.
The special features on the Blu-ray edition are somewhat of a letdown, as there was a lot of room to tell the original story about Slender Man, of how they translated him to becoming a character in a horror movie. Sadly, we just get a short featurette about the cast and how certain choices were made about the movie. When one of the cast members claims it wasn’t about Slender Man, but about how the female characters interacted with one another, we reckon the focus was placed in an eerily wrong direction.
Conclusion
Slender Man is one of those movies that was solely released as a money grab for those that played the game, or simply know about the character. In the end we get another generic horror movie, with a very predictable ending. The movie does have a few visually impressive scenes, but the story as a whole, and the horrendous slow unfolding of events, make this a rather boring experience, instead of one to watch when you’re in the mood to be scared. There are hardly any scary scenes to be found, which is mainly due to how the story is told.
Slender Man (Blu-ray) - Movie Review,
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