Share

Slender Man

accreditation
Taylor Richardson in the movie Slender Man. (NuMetro)
Taylor Richardson in the movie Slender Man. (NuMetro)

WHAT IT'S ABOUT:

In a small town in Massachusetts, four high school girls perform a ritual in an attempt to debunk the lore of “Slender Man.” When one of the girls goes missing mysteriously, the others begin to suspect that she’s his latest victim.

WHAT WE THOUGHT:

Slender Man has been floating around the internet since 2009, scaring up myths and conspiracies in a widely harmless fashion - until two teenagers decided to stab a friend in real life as a sacrifice to him four years ago. This severely tainted the thin man’s image, and has been mostly left to go into obscurity and the internet history books, until a studio decided to wrest him back into the eye of the public with a horror movie that’s nothing more than a twisted cash grab. No passion for horror could be found in any of its scenes, and is just full of stupidly cheap scares and screaming teenagers.

Director Sylvain White’s credits might include TV movie I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer as his limited horror background, but it’s clear there was more interest in just taking Sony’s money than any attempt at making good horror.

Four friends are just teenaging it up until they find a video online on how to summon Slender Man. Of course they watch it, and the wily tall guy starts appearing to them, wanting to give them a hug.

There’s really not much to the story, although I do give them kudos for casting a cast that actually looks like teenagers, as well as normal ones that don’t have some weird feud with the popular kids. However, like all teenagers in horror movies, they scream just as much, with little imagination on how to beat their creepy opponent and just letting the bad things happen to them.

I am terribly fragile watching any horror (but still love them) and while I was still peeking through my fingers most of the time, you still somehow found yourself somewhat bored because of the lack of coherent story. Many of their actions appear very random with no rhyme or reason, and the main guy himself fails to really scare you in your soul. He was originally intended to be a creepypasta meme rather than a full-on horror show, and you rarely ever felt creeped out - just annoyed at the unnecessary jumpscares and weird aggressiveness of the villain.

Slender Man is not only a joke of a horror, but it still remains an inappropriate one. The father of one of the girls involved in the Slender Man trial has been publicly vocal in his opposition to it, and it not being shown in the US town where it happened. The studio fell into a trap they designed themselves, and apparently changed so much to the script because of the opposition, making it a PG-13 film. In this case you should have either gone big or go home, but instead we just got a faceless guy stalking some teenage girls.



We live in a world where facts and fiction get blurred
Who we choose to trust can have a profound impact on our lives. Join thousands of devoted South Africans who look to News24 to bring them news they can trust every day. As we celebrate 25 years, become a News24 subscriber as we strive to keep you informed, inspired and empowered.
Join News24 today
heading
description
username
Show Comments ()
Editorial feedback and complaints

Contact the public editor with feedback for our journalists, complaints, queries or suggestions about articles on News24.

LEARN MORE