Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the "Video Game Movie Marathon" here on Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be covering a horror movie from 2018. That movie is "Slender Man".
Now admittedly, I might be stretching this one a bit. Because it actually started off as an internet meme from a website by a forum user who goes by the name of Eric Knudsen. Which later then got stupidly popular as it eventually got it's own video game, and was also partially responsible for the near-tragedy that happened in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 2014. Where two 12 year old girls held down one of their classmates and ended up stabbing them multiple times. And when they were interrogated by the police after their capture, they said it was done for the Slender Man, and that they were afraid that their families would be killed by it if they didn't commit murder. And no, guys, I am not kidding, *that* is the demented bullshit that they came up with. Now, I am not gonna question the validity of any of their claims, since, after, all, it came from the mindset of two half-retarded chimps who decided to commit murder in the name of some stupid myth. All I'm gonna say is that I am almost baffled by the fact that this myth became popular for slightly infamous and stupid reasons.
And speaking of which, as I just mentioned, the myth became super popular to where it eventually got it's own video game, which was called Slender Man: The Eight Pages. Now, I have never played that game, and after watching the scant few playthroughs of it, I have no desire whatsoever to do so. In case you've never played it, the goal of the game was to collect 8 scraps of notebook paper with drawings on it in a dark forest. And you had to quickly collect them while avoiding contact with the Slender Man. Otherwise, well...he gets you. Although, I don't think it really matters anyway, since he still gets you regardless. Admittedly, it has been quite a long time since I last looked up a playthrough of it on YouTube, but what I can tell you that I remembered about it was that the whole game was just a cheap jump-scare fest. And it didn't help things when almost all of the playthroughs that I watched had people with their webcams turned on as they pretended to get "scared" while playing the game. My theory is that they just wanted the cheap views for their videos, however, I understand that would probably make me sound dickish, so take that for what you will.
Now the other thing I wanted to comment on before I start watching the movie is something of an oddity about the film itself. You see, the original Slender Man game came out in 2012. Then a year later, came it's sequel Slender: The Arrival. And then afterwards...nothing else. Well, in terms of video games anyway. He made some sort of appearance in another movie in 2015, followed by the movie I'm gonna be covering tonight. And the reason why I'm calling this an oddity is because the popularity of Slender Man died down at the tail end of 2013 right to the beginning of 2014. And even with a re-release of Slender: The Arrival for modern consoles, almost nobody gave a shit about it. So, for Sony to release a Slender Man movie in 2018, long after the fad had died off, seems kinda stupid and really foolish to me.
But hey, you know what? Perhaps maybe I'm just nitpicking here. This movie could still be pretty good, despite me not being a fan of the Slender Man mythos. And if last week's review is anything to go by, it certainly has a chance of being worth watching. But the only way I'm gonna find out if the movie is any good at all, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Slender Man".
10 minutes later
OK, I have a question that I'm sorta curious about. So our four main characters, all of which I should mention have gone nameless, have just watched a video on how to summon the Slender Man. Um...who exactly made that video? I mean, for all we know, it could just be bullshit made up by some person who may just be making it up. Furthermore, how exactly would they know how to summon this stupid thing to begin with by closing your eyes until you hear the bell tolling 3 times? I really want to know, guys, because I feel like we're missing some context here as to how exactly this was all made to begin with, you know what I mean?
14 minutes later
So now our 2 main characters are sneaking inside of Katie's house to find out how exactly she disappeared, while our other main female character distracts her father at the front door. Even though earlier on, Katie's father illegally broke into one of our main character's house to find out if his daughter had been hiding there. So...I guess the lesson here is that it's perfectly fine to illegally go inside someone's home in order to find out what happened to your missing best friend. God...this movie is already stupid as shit, and we're not even at the halfway mark yet.
14 minutes later
So, guys, I got some good news. We actually got another name for one of our female leads! And her name is Chloe! *And* she also got turned into a victim of the Slender Man. I really wish I could give a fuck about this character, however, I have been given no reason to care about her, because she was completely shallow and lifeless. In fact, all of our female leads have no real personality or depth to them at all. So unless one of the remaining two develops a personality at some point, I'm probably gonna find no reason to care about them until they get taken by the Slender Man.
1 minute later
Oh...never mind, Chloe is actually still alive. I'm not sure how the fuck she *is* still alive, but then again, it's possible the Slender Man may have possibly just fucked her mind, I guess. But still, I will admit, I completely jumped the gun there.
13 minutes later
OK, that was...sorta interesting to see her face going completely blank like that. Still don't really give a fuck about the character herself, but hey, at least it's kinda something.
20 minutes later
You know, guys, I totally get that this movie is trying to be all tense, weird, and creepy as hell...but I still don't fucking care. I don't care because this movie has become boring as shit, and it's honestly starting to drag, too. I really want this movie to end soon, but if this is the pace it's gonna go at, then it's gonna be a fucking chore to get there!
The Review
Well, that ending was shit. Anyway, guys, that was "Slender Man". No...shut up, movie. I'm done listening to your bullshit propaganda about how "scary" the Slender Man is suppose to be. Holy shit, was that ever a chore to get through...so yeah, I guess if that was any indication, this movie fucking sucked. Granted, I kinda had a feeling it was going to suck, but I still kinda wanted to like it, even if I wasn't really a fan of the Slender Man mythos to begin with. However, in the end, all I got was a shitty movie based off a stupid myth.
So with that in mind, let's get into the review proper by first discussing the writing. And I want to start off by talking about how the myth is set up in this movie, because it sorta ties into why I'm not a fan of the mythos. Essentially, the movie tries to justify that Slender Man is basically like a virus, in which it corrupts a person's mind and soul to where they slowly descend into madness. And by the end of the movie, we get a narration which explains that the more it gets talked about, the more the mythos stays alive, thus I'm assuming Slender Man will always be around. And by the end of the movie, I had a revelation as to what exactly Slender Man is suppose to be, at least according to this film. Do you want to know what Slender Man is actually suppose to be? Well basically...he is essentially a mute version of Freddy Krueger from "Nightmare On Elm Street". Except, with Freddy, he actually had something resembling a personality and a more interesting backstory. Slender Man doesn't have any of that. Now yes, you could attribute most of that to Slender Man being mute in the first place, thus is the reason why he doesn't have an actual personality. However, I don't find the backstory of how Slender Man came to be very interesting at all. It just feels really dull and tacked on, and I'm even less interested in it now than I was beforehand.
And speaking of being not interested, let's about talk about the next big problem with this movie, which would be it's characters. I'm gonna repeat this point once more, as I've done many times in the past, and I'm probably going to continue repeating it until filmmakers actually start to take notice of this shit. If you are attempting to make a straight-up serious horror movie, then you *need* characters that are worth caring about! Oh, and also, make sure they have some kind of established names from the start, so the viewer can find out who is which. Because when this movie started, I had no idea who our main protagonist's names were because the movie didn't establish any of that, outside of one character named Katie Jensen, who was the first person who went missing thanks to the Slender Man. And it wasn't until later on until we finally got to know the rest of these character's names. The black chick is named Chloe, one of the girls is named Wren, and the other one's name is Hallie. But even by that point, I didn't fucking care about what happened to these stupid bitches, because *none* of them have any sort of depth or personality to their characters. So by the point that they slowly descend into madness, you're not gonna give a fuck about *any* of them because the movie doesn't give you any reason to care about them at all. Which is why, again, it's essential for movies like this to make you give a reason to care about it's characters! And when you fail at that, then you have a really shallow movie with no fucking characters to care about, and you're just hoping that the Slender Man will just kill them off as soon as possible so that movie can fucking end.
At least, that's what I *want* to say, if this thing were actually written better. But then that comes into the next problem with this movie, in which it has no sense of direction whatsoever. It starts off simple, when they discover that Katie goes missing and that they're trying to find a way to bring her back safely. Which then leads them into a dark forest in which they were told earlier that they must give up something that's very near and dear to them, whether it's like something that they made when they were younger, or in the case of Chloe in which she had a picture of herself as a child with her Dad a few months before he passed away, that kind of stuff. Now I could easily tell you what the Slender Man really wants as to what our main characters hold near and dear to them, however, the movie doesn't really hide this plot twist very well, and if you don't figure that out for yourself by the time that they reveal it, then you're about as stupid as this movie is. But anyway, going back to my original point, the movie starts off with that, but shortly after Chloe idiotically gets herself victimized by Slender Man, the movie goes off in it's own directionless route, in which it constantly switches scenes back and forth between Wren and Hallie. With Wren, she tries to do a bunch of research on Slender Man's history, while with Hallie, it's more all over the place with her, as she's seen spending time with her boyfriend and her little sister. And both characters little side quests are suppose to correlate with one another, however, it turns into one big fucking mess, because you have almost no idea as to what's going on, or why you should even care about their struggles with Slender Man.
And on top of all that, the pacing in this movie is fucking horrible. Now admittedly, it actually starts off OK, in which they actually get the plot rolling about Slender Man, which roughly takes about less than 10 minutes to get to. But as the movie slowly started to back away from the main plot about Katie Jensen's disappearance, the film's slow ass pacing comes to a grinding halt. And it's especially bad towards the last half hour of the movie, where it just *drags* on for so long. And by that point, I completely lost interest in the whole movie because it decided to have a slow boil. And normally, I would be fine with this, if the movie was actually interesting and I actually gave a shit about what was going on in it. But with this movie, I can't get myself invested when the movie itself is boring as shit and it has no characters to care about. So any sort of tension this movie was trying to build up ultimately feels completely slow and uninteresting as a whole. And the movie is only 90 minutes long, too. It shouldn't *feel* long with that kind of runtime, but this movie found a way to drag itself on for way too god damn long.
So yeah, guys, the writing in this movie is horrible from every direction. We have lifeless characters, coupled with a lifeless, directionless story that goes on for way longer than usual, and it just makes for a horribly made movie. Now believe it or not, as much as I can rail on this horrible fucking writing, I can actually say that the acting was pretty good. Mind you, none of it is great, but I can see that the actors were trying to make this horrible script work in their favor. And for the most part, they certainly do a pretty good job at it. So I gotta give them a lot of props for certainly trying as hard as they possibly could with the horrible material that they were given to work with. It's a pretty rare sight to see that kind of thing here, but hey, they certainly did try.
Special effects in this movie are mostly decent. There were a couple of visuals that look kinda cool, like when you see tentacles coming out of a girl's body. It might have been one of the main characters, however, I don't really remember if it was them or not. Slender Man himself looks OK...at least, until towards the end where the CG comes into play, and it honestly looks terrible. And I know that they tried to hide it as much as possible, considering it took place in the dark, however, I could still see it, and it just doesn't look really good at all. So, outside of some shitty-looking CG, the effects here are decent for what they are.
Camerawork here is pretty good. The lighting, though, is honestly a mixed bag at best. In some cases, it looks perfectly fine, as long as it's shot during the daytime. However, almost any scene that's shot during the night feels like it's gotten darker. So whenever you see a character enter a dark room, the darkness will envelope them to near pitch blackness. Or like when our characters first enter the dark forest where the Slender Man is at, the shadows around the forest will make the scene look darker than usual, and it might get difficult to view some of those scenes because of it's darker lighting. Mind you, it doesn't totally get in the way of the whole movie, but it's definitely noticeable, and the lighting could've been fine-tuned a *lot* better. But anyway, setting aside the questionably dark lighting, the sound-mix here is mixed well. And the score here is also just a typical generic horror movie score that's been done many times beforehand, so it's nothing ultimately special and really forgettable.
So ultimately, guys, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "Slender Man"? No. In no way can I recommend this movie at all, unless you're somehow still fascinated by the Slender Man mythos. But even then, it's best you just play any of the games and stick with those. Besides which, all of the problems this movie has are too much for me to not recommend this in any way, such as the story being stupid and confusing, the pacing being mostly shit towards the latter half of the film, the characters are all shallow and shit, it's really just a horrible movie all around. Now is this the worst the horror film I've ever seen? Fuck no. I've seen far horror movies for this series and on my own time, and this is not one of those. However, it definitely is an awful film and I seriously cannot even recommend this to anybody else other than it's fans. I'm not a fan of it, and this movie certainly did not win me over whatsoever. So I'm gonna go and watch a better horror movie, preferably a horror comedy of sorts, since I prefer those over straight-up horror movies. I think I'll just go and watch "Stitches" again. That one is always pretty good to me, so I'm gonna go and watch that next, and forget that I ever wasted time on this movie at all.
And with that, guys, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
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