Film Review: Slender Man

"For Those Who Hear The Three Bell, Accept His Invitation..."

Based upon the infamous fictional, supernatural figure which began life as an internet meme created by Eric Knudsen back in 2009, Slender Man, directed by French filmmaker, Sylvain White, brings the character to life upon the big screen after time well spent within both the video game format and inspired-by low-budget movies including Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story in 2015 in which Doug Jones of Pan's Labyrinth fame portrayed a character with familiar lanky body features. With a focus on attempting to mould the titular character into a somewhat cranky and generic storytelling facade with a staggeringly obvious point of reference being strangely aimed at Ringu and the subsequent American remake, The Ring, Slender Man is a complete and utter failure of horror cinema, a movie which seems to not bother at all in adding believable characters and instead uses the film's youthful cast as cardboard cut-outs in order for the action to instead focus more so on baffling imagery and ridiculously over-cooked jump scares which all take place upon a colour palette which was so unbelievably dark that I had to check whether there was enough room in the film's budget for the lighting department. As you may be able to tell, Slender Man is utter pants. 

After a group of young friends decide to summon the mythical man himself, a character designed in the film as a somewhat CGI hybrid of The Silence from Doctor Who and a wooden artist manikin, it comes at no surprise whatsoever that the quartet of buzz-induced younglings begin to experience strange, nightmarish visions of the suit-wearing being of whom they attempted to contact in the first place. Cue meaningless cattle-prod scares, awful dialogue and wacky dream sequences, White's movie tries to blend the youthful sensibility of a film such as It with a much darker, ice-cold tone, but with a complete absence of empathy for the leading cast who conform unsurprisingly to the a-typical horror movie cannon fodder, the audience spends ninety minutes anticipating the arrival of the titular villain but quickly become bored to death due to a complete lack of threat and belief in anything which happens on screen. With a concluding act which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, the film ends leaving an awfully scented taste in the mouth regarding what might have been for the film in the hands of better filmmakers, and even with the use of Funkadelic's brilliant "Maggot Brain" on the soundtrack, Slender Man is the worst type of horror movie possible, a generic, wasteful, and utterly bland sludge-fest with very little redeeming features worthy of anyone's time. 

Overall Score: 3/10