I’ve finally seen it. The film which I’ve spent months looking forward to. The only thing that kept me going during A-level exams and the wait for results. And after those months of waiting for this masterpiece, the film almost completely passed me by. Slender Man released about two weeks ago, and it just so happened that I was camping for the first week of its incredibly short run. Despite this setback, I still managed to make it to one of the few cinemas around me that were still showing the film, and boy was it worth it!

It might not meant to be so, but Slender Man is honestly one of the funniest films I’ve seen all year. It takes itself so incredibly seriously, and that makes it clear just how much of a shitshow this film is. It tries to be the next Blair Witch Project or The Ring, but in reality it’s more like the Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 of the horror genre. Much like that equally beautiful film, it’s unintentionally hilarious, and honestly it makes it a much better film. If you haven’t worked it out already, this review may not be 100% serious, but I’m still going to try and be fair to this work of art.

The Positives

This probably won’t be hugely shocking, but there aren’t many positive aspects of Slender Man. Despite the fact that the film does feel like a cheap, corporate cash-grab which should have come out at least 5 years earlier, there are some pieces of gold in this pile of shit. Well, maybe not gold, but something that isn’t completely worthless.

Whilst the majority of the acting in this film is mediocre at best, I think that there is one actor who should be singled out for her acting being quite good. Julia Goldani Telles, who plays Hallie, is the best actor by far in Slender Man. Her acting is believable and compelling to the point that she almost makes the terrible script sound compliantly written. It was extremely lucky that she has more screen-time than any of the other main characters.

One of the things I was hoping for when I wrote what I would like to see in my ideal Slender Man film was that he would be more of a force of nature than a monster; my wish was definitely answered. When scenes are set in the forest he blends into the scenery quite effectively, although his appearances are not subtle and it’s not hard to spot him. The design of the character also reflects the fact that he’s a force of nature. The texture of his face is like the bark of a tree, which makes the character look slightly more believable. Even though I like that they’ve designed Slender Man to blend in with the forest, the film takes this way too far during some parts of the film. That’s something I’ll touch on later though; I want to try and keep this part mostly positive.

The cinematography is not unbearable, but it’s really nothing special. Some nice shots stick out, but that’s only because the majority of the film is shot in a very uninspired way. Despite the fact that whilst I was watching Slender Man these scenes stood out, I can remember none of them now. This has been exasperated by the fact that I’ve watched some actual films since this garbage fire, which were actually shot in interesting and creative ways (for example The Grand Budapest Hotel). As I’ve been writing this paragraph, I’ve realised that this isn’t really praise for Slender Man, and I don’t really have many more positive things to say about it. I guess without rambling too much more I’ll move on to:

The Negatives

Pretty much everything about Slender Man could fit into this section: from the writing, to the acting, to it’s pitiful attempts to be fucking scary. During watching this film, I was either bored or laughing, and I should be doing neither of these things during a film which is meant to be scary. The trailers before this fucking film were much more entertaining than this fucking dumpster fire. The fucking trailers before this film evoked more emotions than this piece of shit. The 30 second fucking trailer for the Nun make me feel more scared than an 90 minutes of fucking Slender Man.

If I had to pick one lump from this pile of shit, the most foul-smelling, horrible piece of crap, I would definitely choose the writing. Most of the cast’s terrible performances don’t help, but better writing would have at least made this film bearable. It’s clear that the script was written by people who have no idea how teenage girls act and talk, to the point that it is often unbearable. Before they ‘summon’ Slender Man, the girls spend an uncomfortable amount of time talking about the porn that they are collectively watching (wtf). This really uncomfortable exchange perfectly sets the confusing, messy tone which continues for the rest of the film. Most of what the girls say is irritating, uncomfortable, or otherwise weird. If this was any other film I would provide specific examples of the terrible dialogue, but honestly it’s impossible to pick out one specific moment that’s worse than any of the others. Pretty much every single line is terrible.

The shit writing in this film isn’t limited to the character’s dialogue and actions; the plot is also terrible. It attempts to be a weird modernisation of the Ring, which it really shouldn’t be. For some obscene reason, the first step to summoning Slender Man is to watch a weird Youtube video, telling you how to do the ritual to summon him. Weirdly though, once you’ve seen this video you’re basically locked into the process, and the thoughts about Slender Man drive you mad until you actually do the summoning ritual. But at the same time it doesn’t, there are other people who watch the video but then don’t go any further down the path. This level of consistency and care in the storytelling continues throughout the rest of the film. I think my favourite example of the beautiful writing is a scene where the girls try and get into Katie’s house whilst avoiding Katie’s very drunk father. They very clearly set up the fact that the back door is unlocked, and we clearly see that Katie’s father is asleep, but the girls don’t all just sneak in. No, that would make much too much sense. Instead, they decide that one of the girls should ring the doorbell and wake up the father whilst the other two girls sneak up to Katie’s room. This particular example isn’t particularly terrible, but it really irritated me for some reason. I could ramble about the terrible plot of this film for many, many more paragraphs, but I’m going to limit this to one paragraph.

There’s much more that could be said about this film, but this ‘review’ has gone on for much too long already. In summary, this film is a horrible mess. It’s plot is slow, it doesn’t make much sense, and it is extremely irritating. The characters are awfully written and the (mostly) terrible acting really doesn’t help. Honestly, this film doesn’t have many redeeming features; however, I would 100% recommend watching Slender Man. I had such a good time, which is something I can’t say for a lot of horror films. Don’t watch it alone, that would be pure torture, but watching it with a friends is so much fun.

Anyway, I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to put something out, but I’ve been settling into my life at university. Now that I’ve been here for about three weeks, I’ll probably start posting much more regularly (in theory once a week, but who knows). I left my USB stick with the batman outline at home, so there will probably be a few other things before I get back to Fixing the DCEU. One of these other things might be a more personal thing about freshers week and how my life is going at university, but I’ll see if I feel about writing about personal stuff as well as all the random crap I write about. Anyway, until next time !!!