You are walking in the woods at night. Leaves crunch underfoot and animals roam the undergrowth. You are starting to regret coming here. Then, a twig snaps behind you. You whip around to scan the trees when you see an abnormal-looking tree. Suddenly, the tree starts moving towards you and you see that it’s actually the legendary modern eldritch horror: Slenderman.
Everyone knows at least some part of the urban legends surrounding Slenderman. Some say he is a demon, while others say that he’s a pied piper of sorts, leading younger people to their death. The urban legend has been gaining popularity since 2012 when it was first put on an internet forum as a horror story. Now the Slender legend has a rather large fanbase and a multiple media presentation, including countless homemade videos, Halloween costumes, a videogame and now, apparently, a movie.
When I heard about the new Slender movie directed by Sylvain White coming to theatres, I got excited. This movie got my hopes up, but the moment the opening scene started, I realized I had made a mistake. Not only was this one of the least scary movies I have seen, it looked like it was shot on too small of a budget. The slender CGI was built like a bad 1980s movie with a too smooth and shiny look to it, like he was made of plastic.
To make things worse, every single one of the main leads looked stiff and uncomfortable, like they were still learning how to act. The girls are good actresses on their own, but put together in one movie, look fake and not like best friends at all; Hallie played by Julia Goldani Telles, Wren played by Joey King, Chloe played by Jaz Sinclair and Katie played by Annalise Basso. In some scenes one of the main characters, Wren, is supposed to look frightened by her predicament but instead she just looks vaguely uncomfortable. There is one scene where all of the girls are sitting in one of their basements watching porn together. The scene had no real need to be there and just served to confuse me. Most of the scenes were also filmed in very low light settings which make things hard to see and could possibly serve to hide how bad the movie actually is.
Mix all of these bad movie elements together and the result is a terrible movie not worth anyone’s time. This movie had so much potential, yet it fell so short. I would not recommend this movie to anyone unless they want a laugh, though the movie is almost too pathetic to even warrant a laugh.