Synopsis: In a small town in Massachusetts, a group of friends, fascinated by the internet lore of the Slender Man, attempt to prove that he doesn’t actually exist — until one of them mysteriously goes missing.

Slender Man Review

by Dylan Blight

Slender Man deserved better than this.

As an internet creation coming from the Creepypasta forums and then spiralling into a phenomenon with the Eight Pages game and Marble Hornets YouTube series from 2009–2014, Slender Man suddenly became a household horror name, mainly associated with jump scares and fan-made horror projects. However, in 2014 the shocking stabbing of a girl by two 12-year-old friends changed what many thought of as fun internet horror stories to real-life terror.

Slender Man the movie, however, isn’t based on those events (there is a documentary about them called Beware the Slenderman), it’s simply taking the Slender Man mythos that was created online and, well, doing a terrible job at bringing it to life.

The odd decision was made to turn Slender Man into a pseudo The Ring movie. Four teenage girls hear about an online video that, if you watch, will send the Slender Man after you. Of course, human curiosity spikes and they watch the creepy video with flashing imagery, mixed cult symbols and many time-lapsed forest skies. A week later things start to get creepy as one of the girls disappears and the rest start experiencing odd nightmares and seeing things.

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What’s great about Slender Man as a horror figure is he’s freaky looking. He’s a tall, slender man with no face and has freakishly long arms as well as the ability to produce more and can teleport around chasing you. Once you look into his face, you’re gone. He freaks me out. He’s freaked me out since I played the original Eight Pages game years ago. Even the Marble Hornets YouTube series made with $0 for their budget does a better job at making Slender Man creepy. Javier Botet is credited as playing the Slender Man; however, in close-up scenes he looks like a CGI mess.

Marble Hornets was a YouTube series that produced a Blair Witch-style story around Slender Man. It was great for the time and led to a 2015 spin-off film titled Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story. As amateur and no-budget as that YouTube series was, it offered more interesting character and scares than this movie that’s built entirely on easily predicted jump scares and epilepsy-inducing imagery.

At about sixty minutes into Slender Man I looked at my watch and wondered how much longer before Slender Man either devoured the souls of the girls on screen or my own. I suggest passing on Slender Man.

Directors: Sylvain White
Writers: David Birke, Victor Surge (based on a character by)
Cast: Joey King, Julia Goldani Telles, Jaz Sinclair, Annalise Basso, Alex Fitzalan, Taylor Richardson, Javier Botet