Why Slender Man (2018) is an unnecessary and hurtful crap
Oh my.
“Slender Man”.
Directed by Sylvain White, who you may, or may not know for taking part in directing tv series as “The Mentalist” or “The Originals”. The script was written by David Brike who, judging by his work so far clearly specializes in writing horror/thriller pieces. You would think that it shouldn't be so bad, right?
Well, wrong.
Let’s start with a brief history on Slender Man himself.
It’s a fictional internet myth. Created in 2009 by user Eric Knudsen for the competition on webpage SomethingAwful.com. The competition consisted of transforming in the graphic program photographs depicting everyday life in such a way that it would be disturbing. Eric uploaded a photography of children running with a tall, thin and pale apparition in the background. And a second one showing children playing on a playground. Here you can see Slender Man in the shadow of a tree.
And this is how it started. Like an avalanche the character of Slender Man took over the creepypasta community only to leak out into mainstream. People created a whole mythology and origins. Some people started to believe that it’s a actual legend. And some started to create awesome stuff inspired by this phenomenon. For example, great online series Marble Hornets, everymanHYBRID or TribeTwelve, or quite successful video games like Slender: The Arrival.
But this modern-day myth inspired also a tragedy. In 2014 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, two 12-year old girls stabbed their colleague 19-times. The girls miraculously survived. The girls later stated they did this to please Slender Man. One of the girls will spend the next three years in a mental institution. The other had been sentenced to 40 years in a mental hospital.
If you would like to know more about this case I recommend a documentary “Beware the Slenderman” released by HBO.
Why I mentioned this case? Well...
Why now? After 10 years after Slender Man was created, why now we get a film? After 6 years form the Waukesha incident...Because Hollywood apparently thought now it’s a good idea to make a film about teenagers messing around with a deadly entity and slowly one by one dying in a ridiculous way.
Slender Man movie starts out like any teenage drama. We’ve got ourselves four high school girls, each one represents one of the stereotypical canons. We’ve got the always-in-black weird one, sportsy-popular one, shy one and the flannel girl-next-door one. And to be honest it’s all totally irrelevant later. We don’t get to know characters too well. In first ten minutes we see the girls in school, then we find out that an athletic girl has a clingy younger sister. In next couple of minutes all the girls are in flannel girls house. We learn that she doesn’t like her life with her alcoholic father and she would like to run away.
And literally the next thing the girls do is to summon Slender Man! Typical ladies' night am I right? So how you summon Slender Man according to the movie? You watch a Ring-like video you found on some shady forum in the internet.
Our heroines do it...and suddenly it’s seven day later (oh, irony) and they all have the same dreams that looks like fantasy from Samara Morgan high on LSD.
“Slender Man”.
Directed by Sylvain White, who you may, or may not know for taking part in directing tv series as “The Mentalist” or “The Originals”. The script was written by David Brike who, judging by his work so far clearly specializes in writing horror/thriller pieces. You would think that it shouldn't be so bad, right?
Well, wrong.
Let’s start with a brief history on Slender Man himself.
It’s a fictional internet myth. Created in 2009 by user Eric Knudsen for the competition on webpage SomethingAwful.com. The competition consisted of transforming in the graphic program photographs depicting everyday life in such a way that it would be disturbing. Eric uploaded a photography of children running with a tall, thin and pale apparition in the background. And a second one showing children playing on a playground. Here you can see Slender Man in the shadow of a tree.
And this is how it started. Like an avalanche the character of Slender Man took over the creepypasta community only to leak out into mainstream. People created a whole mythology and origins. Some people started to believe that it’s a actual legend. And some started to create awesome stuff inspired by this phenomenon. For example, great online series Marble Hornets, everymanHYBRID or TribeTwelve, or quite successful video games like Slender: The Arrival.
But this modern-day myth inspired also a tragedy. In 2014 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, two 12-year old girls stabbed their colleague 19-times. The girls miraculously survived. The girls later stated they did this to please Slender Man. One of the girls will spend the next three years in a mental institution. The other had been sentenced to 40 years in a mental hospital.
If you would like to know more about this case I recommend a documentary “Beware the Slenderman” released by HBO.
Why I mentioned this case? Well...
Why now? After 10 years after Slender Man was created, why now we get a film? After 6 years form the Waukesha incident...Because Hollywood apparently thought now it’s a good idea to make a film about teenagers messing around with a deadly entity and slowly one by one dying in a ridiculous way.
Slender Man movie starts out like any teenage drama. We’ve got ourselves four high school girls, each one represents one of the stereotypical canons. We’ve got the always-in-black weird one, sportsy-popular one, shy one and the flannel girl-next-door one. And to be honest it’s all totally irrelevant later. We don’t get to know characters too well. In first ten minutes we see the girls in school, then we find out that an athletic girl has a clingy younger sister. In next couple of minutes all the girls are in flannel girls house. We learn that she doesn’t like her life with her alcoholic father and she would like to run away.
And literally the next thing the girls do is to summon Slender Man! Typical ladies' night am I right? So how you summon Slender Man according to the movie? You watch a Ring-like video you found on some shady forum in the internet.
Our heroines do it...and suddenly it’s seven day later (oh, irony) and they all have the same dreams that looks like fantasy from Samara Morgan high on LSD.
Then during a class trip to a cemetery, flannel girl mysteriously disappears after she looked into the forest for a longer while.
So that’s basically all that is in the plot. After that we’ve got a lot of irrelevant running and screaming. A couple of not so good jumpscares. Strange attempt to make a original origin story for the main monster. Very bad special effects. Strangely cut plot with enormous holes. More “scary” dreams an visions. Lots of “something terrible turns out to be just a dream” cliché. And more irrelevant running and screaming.
Returning to the plot holes; they didn’t seem like a result of terrible scriptwriting. Because they probably were not.
At first the film was obviously planned as PG18 film. But somewhere along the making the rating dropped to PG13. It’s hard to guess if the creators wanted just to get to reach a wider audience or they just wanted to avoid the announced lawsuit form families of Waukesha girls.
What’s from it? Well if you compare the trailers released a couple months ago and the actual film you will see that there are many scenes that actually did not appear in the final cut. Scenes that included for example what happened to one of the main and supporting characters. Scene that included a character that did not appear in the film at all. Scenes that include gore, suicide and other disturbing content. All these things can’t be officially in a PG13 film.
The technical aspects are non-existent; whole film is so dark that the forest scenes are literary one black void of screams, piss stained pants and teenager angst. I suppose that this was to hide the poor special effects, and models for Slender Man. The characters deaths were non-aggravating and I felt quite unsatisfied, especially in the absence of scenes from the trailer that predicted more juicy pieces.
Summarizing:
What will we get when we sum up the controversies around the film, the rating change and the fact that the whole production is almost 10 years too late for all the Slender Man hype, and a very bad technical outcome?
A film so boring, plot-less and unnecessary that I don’t really recommend watching it. And there’s really not much else to it.
So that’s basically all that is in the plot. After that we’ve got a lot of irrelevant running and screaming. A couple of not so good jumpscares. Strange attempt to make a original origin story for the main monster. Very bad special effects. Strangely cut plot with enormous holes. More “scary” dreams an visions. Lots of “something terrible turns out to be just a dream” cliché. And more irrelevant running and screaming.
Returning to the plot holes; they didn’t seem like a result of terrible scriptwriting. Because they probably were not.
At first the film was obviously planned as PG18 film. But somewhere along the making the rating dropped to PG13. It’s hard to guess if the creators wanted just to get to reach a wider audience or they just wanted to avoid the announced lawsuit form families of Waukesha girls.
What’s from it? Well if you compare the trailers released a couple months ago and the actual film you will see that there are many scenes that actually did not appear in the final cut. Scenes that included for example what happened to one of the main and supporting characters. Scene that included a character that did not appear in the film at all. Scenes that include gore, suicide and other disturbing content. All these things can’t be officially in a PG13 film.
The technical aspects are non-existent; whole film is so dark that the forest scenes are literary one black void of screams, piss stained pants and teenager angst. I suppose that this was to hide the poor special effects, and models for Slender Man. The characters deaths were non-aggravating and I felt quite unsatisfied, especially in the absence of scenes from the trailer that predicted more juicy pieces.
Summarizing:
What will we get when we sum up the controversies around the film, the rating change and the fact that the whole production is almost 10 years too late for all the Slender Man hype, and a very bad technical outcome?
A film so boring, plot-less and unnecessary that I don’t really recommend watching it. And there’s really not much else to it.
My rate: ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
I will leave you with this and wishes to find a better movie for the evening than me, and piece of my artistry below.
Take care!
Yours truly
Annie Wood
I will leave you with this and wishes to find a better movie for the evening than me, and piece of my artistry below.
Take care!
Yours truly
Annie Wood
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