User blog:Dorkpool/Slender Man (2018): A Review

Well, I saw the Slender Man movie. Sort of. I had originally intended to go see it in theaters the day it came out, mainly because I wanted to see and write about it ASAP and because I knew it wouldn’t be crowded. Unfortunately, I got sick. First it was a cold, now it’s pink eye. Everything’s just turning up Dorkpool!

Anyway, I ended up finding a pirated copy of it online today, and saw it. Well, most of it. The version I saw started mid-sentence, and there were ads during it. Also, since it was a pirated copy recorded inside a theater, it wasn’t exactly the best quality. However, I got what was going on for the most part, and feel confident in talking about it.

So, how was it? Simply put: incredible. It was everything I wanted not just in a Slender Man movie, but in a movie. I was partly glad I saw it at home because it made me orgasm 37 times in a row because of how awesome it was. Truly, the movie is too good for us.

…yeah, I’m just fucking with you. Honestly, it was alright. Passable. Decent. Nothing too terrible, but nothing all that great either. It’s a movie that exists and is made competently.

Alright, I should get a bit more specific. I’ll probably be discussing some spoilers, just so you’re aware.

So, what exactly happens during this movie? Well, four teenage girls decide during a sleepover to summon Slender Man through the Internet after watching weird porn. Because teenage girls watch porn together, I guess. I just asked my friend who’s female and almost 20 if that’s something teenage girls do, and she said, “I’ve never done that,” so who knows?

Anyway, these girls summon Slender Man via a ritual and a Ring-style video, and things start to go downhill. One of them gets taken by Slender Man, so they have to get her back which leads to other members of the group going insane, dying, or being taken by Slender Man.

Notice how I haven’t named any of these girls. That’s partly because I barely remember a thing about them. If you showed me a picture of all of them, and said, “Name these characters,” I’d be hard pressed to. That’s partly because the picture quality wasn’t all that great, and partly because as characters they weren’t exactly memorable. Based on what I remember, there’s the first girl who disappeared, Katie, who has an abusive father and wants to run away. There’s…I want to say Chloe, who I’m pretty sure is the token black person of the group and whose father died when she was young. There’s Wren, who apparently has a lot of trophies I think. And finally there’s Hallie, who has a sister and is kind of a bitch at times.

They’re poorly defined characters who I really don’t care about. Hell, the characterization two of them get is quickly abandoned.

During the movie, Wren is all panicked about Slender Man and is the one trying to get to the bottom of things. She ends up falling apart, but it seems she’s being set up as the hero of the film. Hallie, meanwhile, is shown to ignore the Slender Man stuff and bury her head in the sand and care more about boys than getting to the bottom of things. Basically, Wren seemed like she gave a shit about her friends and Hallie seemed self absorbed. But then towards the end of the film, it’s revealed that Wren accidentally exposed Hallie’s sister to Slender Man, and Hallie ends up sacrificing herself to save her sister.

Well, I guess the characters have depth? Maybe?

Another issue I had with the film was how it depicted Slender Man. Now, admittedly, it’s not the worst depiction I’ve seen of the character. That honor goes to the book Slender Man: Game of Myths, an actual book you can buy that’s basically just poorly written fan fiction (both in terms of story and spelling and grammar), which gave Slender Man an origin, removing all the mystery from him. I own that book, and really need to talk about it one of these days.

Anyway, while the depiction in the movie isn’t as bad as the one in that book, it’s still not exactly great. The main issue I have is with him being summoned, and how he’s summoned. It involves a video online that’s apparently easily accessible, and some ritual that goes along with it. Honestly, the way it happens, it feels less like a scary summoning ritual and more like a dumb teen challenge. This movie should’ve been a YouTube video called “WE SUMMONED SLENDER MAN AT 3 AM (GONE WRONG!!!!!)” if I’m being honest.

Also, I don’t like the fact that Slender Man can be summoned. I always liked the fact that he just sort of found you. There was no mechanism of control over him; he did as he pleased. Personally, I think it’s scarier if some monster finds you at random, unbeknownst to you, than if you summon it.

Another minor gripe I have with the summoning thing is this weird recurring trend of three bells. It’s mentioned in the ritual, and it’s heard again throughout the rest of the film from time to time. I don’t know if it’s symbolic or what, but it just seems odd.

Outside of the summoning and ritual stuff, there are other issues I have with this version of Slender Man. For example, towards the end of the film Slender Man pulls one of the girls out a window, breaking the window and leaving a mess behind. This is a small thing, but it bugs me because it seems too unsubtle for him. From most of the stories I’ve read about the character, I got the feeling he didn’t leave evidence of his existence behind by accident. Sure, he’d leave some evidence behind, like the organs in bags on trees in the original mythos, but that’s on purpose. Seriously, you don’t put organs in bags and stick them on tree branches by accident.

Other than that, the depiction of Slender Man is alright. I just had to get used to not being alerted to his presence by audio/video glitches, since this isn’t a found footage movie.

That all being said, there were some good things in their depiction of Slender Man. For one thing, they give him this creaking wood sound effect to imply he’s around, and that’s honestly a good idea. He’s associated with forests and wooded areas. It makes sense that he’d sound like creaking wood. It’s a cool idea and one of the few interesting things the movie does with Slender Man.

Also, Slender Man looks kind of cool. Admittedly, you don’t actually see him much in the movie, and I never saw him too clearly due to bad video quality, but from what I saw he looked alright. They used CGI to make him taller and give him branch-like tentacles and shit. I thought that was kind of cool, and something I’m not used to. Usually when you see Slender Man, it’s a guy in a suit, partly because the people filming have a budget of video camera, morph suit, and actual suit. Since the movie has a movie’s budget, they can do a bit more.

However, not all of the movie’s effects are all that good. I’m specifically thinking of one point towards the end, where a character – Hallie, I think – is looking the mirror, and sees her stomach bulge like she’s pregnant. What looks like spiked fingers start poking out, and then they burst out, revealing a bunch of branches. It all looks incredibly fake.

This scene actually leads into another issue with the movie: it’s not all that scary. There are a few fake out jump scares here and there that are more annoying than anything. Also, that scene I just talked about pisses me off because it was part of a dream sequence. Hallie has some nightmare with Slender Man, then wakes up, walks into her bathroom, looks into the mirror, and then the scene I described earlier happens. Then she wakes up. Yep. Dream within a dream. That’s some Inception-level shit right there, emphasis on the shit.

The movie does try doing these weird Totheark/Ring video like scenes with just creepy imagery. If you’ve seen the previews, you’ll have some idea of what I’m talking about. While some of these scenes look alright, they’re not all that scary, and Totheark honestly did it better. I’m going to go on a mini-rant comparing the scenes in this movie to Totheark’s stuff, so I might as well explain what Totheark is since some of you may be unfamiliar.

Basically, Totheark is a companion series of sorts to Marble Hornets, the most well known Slender Man web series. Totheark is another account that, in canon, is run by Slender Man’s proxies. The account releases various videos that act as clues/warnings to Jay, the main character of Marble Hornets. These videos are usually glitchy, creepy, and edited in weird ways. Honestly, they sort of feel like Adult Swim bumpers, and I mean this in the best way possible. Also, they’re relevant to the plot of Marble Hornets. The weird scenes in the Slender Man movie just feel like they tried being like Totheark, but didn’t quite get it. I think the best way to describe these scenes are as a soulless Hollywood cash grab version of Totheark. You know, sort of how this movie is a soulless Hollywood cash grab based around Slender Man.

Also, they aren’t really plot relevant. They’re only there to show the character is going a bit nuts. They don’t really say anything about the character, they’re only there to scare the character and audience. And while they may succeed at scaring the character, they really aren’t scary to the audience.

That all being said, there is one very cool weird scene in the movie. One of the characters, Wren, is looking up Slender Man at the library (which leads to an Easter egg or two; I’ll talk more about that in a bit) when the lights go out. This leads to her getting attacked by Slender Man, who puts his hand over her face. We then see that Wren’s face is gone and hear her muffled screams. Really, a pretty cool scene, and one I have to give some kudos to. Honestly, I personally think all the “weird” scenes as I call them are the best parts of the movie. They’re not great and I think Totheark does it better, but they’re something different at least. The movie’s shot in a pretty boring way, and on the whole it is boring. The weird scenes at least provide something that’s not too boring.

I mentioned Easter eggs earlier, and I’d like to discuss that a bit more. I caught four Easter eggs. Three are during the library scene. Wren comes across a picture of Slender Man that’s actually from the original mythos, along with a quote from the original mythos, and finally there’s a picture of Der Ritter, an entity mentioned in the original mythos who many consider to be Slender Man, just during the 1600s. Another one is where we find out the last name of one of the characters is Knudsen. That’s probably a reference to Eric Knudsen, better known as Victor Surge, creator of Slender Man.

That all being said, there were a lot of missed opportunities for nods and Easter eggs. For example, after Katie disappears, the girls go through her stuff and find Katie was looking up Slender Man stuff. They find some videos Katie was looking at involving Slender Man. These are just poorly made videos about people being abducted by him or something. Honestly, what would’ve been cool is if they used some clips from the ARGs. You know, stuff like Marble Hornets, TribeTwelve, EverymanHYBRID, DarkHarvest, etc. That would’ve been a nice little nod.

Or maybe use the Slender Man song in the movie’s score. Maybe just an instrumental of it or something. The score they ended up using was honestly pretty forgettable, and having the Slender Man song in the movie would’ve been pretty neat. It’s a good song, very creepy and atmospheric. I dig it. I’m listening to it right now.

A lack of Easter eggs aren’t damning or anything, but they represent a missed opportunity. Honestly, missed opportunity is the best way to describe this movie. It’s clear no one working on it gave too much of a shit about the lore and mythos surrounding Slender Man, and just grafted some Ring story onto Slender Man and called it a day. And that’s a real shame. Slender Man is a cool character, and some great things have been done with him. Look at the original mythos, or the ARGs, or even the game Slender.

Is this movie terrible though? No. It’s an entirely passable, but very forgettable, movie. And that’s a real shame.

At least it’s better than Always Watching.