Horror Review: Slender Man (2018)

Slender Man is the fake internet urban legend that inspired a few teenagers to do crazy stuff including attempted murder. The eponymous movie focuses on a group of friends experiencing hallucinations and paranoia after summoning what we're told is a real entity until they eventually disappear, or, to use the technical term, are nonspecifically dissolved. Warning: SPOILERS.

After finding out some boys in their class are planning to summon Slender Man, high-school students Hallie, Wren, Katie, and Chloe decide to do the same. Soon, they're having nightmares, seeing the faceless man everywhere, and Katie disappears. As things get progressively worse, the surviving friends become ever more desperate to stop the haunting.

Meet: Hallie, a star athlete who doesn't care about her trophies for reasons and has a younger sister, Lizzie, who looks up to her and her cool friends; Katie, who has a drunk father and wants out of her shitty life; Chloe, who has a thing for Kyle, who wears glasses; Wren, who's the messy one; and there's also Tom, who likes Hallie and is a jock. And that's about it. These aren't well developed characters. But at least the monster is awesome and there's suspense and gore and... Actually, no. Sorry. If that were the case, I wouldn't be reviewing this. Anyway, the foursome follows the instructions of a Ringu-like Internet video to summon the mysterious entity known as Slender Man, who's this really tall and thin, faceless, humanoid creature with badly photoshopped tentacles. Katie wants this to work because apparently Slender Man takes people to a secret place. Since the movie doesn't hint at anything else going on at Katie's house apart from her dad being always drunk, running off with a faceless creature that goes around kidnapping children doesn't seem much of an improvement. Oh, and turns out the boys chickened out and didn't do it.

One week later, the girls are having nightmares and Katie in particular is acting super weird. She immediately disappears during a field trip to a historical cemetery and Wren becomes convinced it was Slender Man. So, with the help of Katie's online buddy, AleeyKat93, they try to summon Slender Man to a meeting to ask him about Katie. Because that makes perfect sense. No, really, I'm sure the supernatural kid hoarder will love to clarify the situation and return his newest acquisition. The instructions are as follows: bring something you care dearly about and don't look at his faceless face or you'll go mad. Hmm, I have the sneaking suspicion that Slender Man wants more than a misshapen mug Wren did in class when she was a kid. Shockingly, it works. Except, Chloe freaks out, takes her blindfold, and ends up seeing Slender Man's not face. Naturally, things get even worse from here.

Slender Man's signature intro is some creaking and snapping wood noises (no idea why) and we'll be hearing a lot of that. The spookiest trick is the video call showing his POV as he enters his victims' home. Everything else is predictable and unimaginative. The first to go is Chloe, who gets one of those calls and hallucinates the Slender Man strangling her only to realize she's strangling herself. After that, she becomes catatonic. This leaves an increasingly unhinged Wren and lifeless Hallie, who tries to ignore all the weird shit.

While Hallie agrees to go on a date with Tom, Wren is researching in the library. She finds a book that describes beings like Slender Man as "bio-electrical systems" who affect the minds of all who come into contact with them, driving them crazy in various ways, which is a process that can end in "nonspecific dissolution". So, instead of coming up with a cool, ancient legend the movie went with that and used it to explain/ruin other cool legends. Really, this explanation sucks. Slender Man shows up to mess with Wren in the library, making her believe she's trapped in a bookcase maze. By the way, while we saw Chloe strangling herself, it doesn't seem Wren is actually yelling and running around, or the librarian would've reacted differently.

Hallie doesn't care about Wren's findings and just wants to go on her date. Predictably, that's when Slender Man decides to mess with her and makes her see Tom's head spin like he's possessed. That's mean, Slender Man. At least let Hallie get laid before the end. She explains the situation to Tom and makes him promise not to watch the video. Next day in class, he looks at her funny and they never interact again. Unfortunately, things are only going to get worse for Hallie. After her sister ends up in the hospital with what seems to be a panic attack and she suffers some more lame Slender Man-induced hallucinations, she finds out Wren took Lizzie to summon the same creature that already took Katie, drove Chloe irreversibly mad, and is currently targeting them. Wren's excuse? Lizzie really, really wanted to do it. Oh, okay, then. No, seriously, Wren?! Also, when the hell did she do that and why didn't Lizzie exhibit any symptoms until now?

Wren has finally figured out what any idiot would've known from the start. Slender Man doesn't want your sentimental crap - he wants YOU! And that's the only way to save Lizzie. Wait, what? If Lizzie saw him or summoned him, too, wouldn't he want her as well? Anyway, Slender Man's tree arms crash through the window of Wren's bedroom and he drags her away. And then there was one... Hallie is all alone, now, and the information Wren gathered makes it clear there's no hope. Katie's online buddy turns out to have been a patient in a psych ward who herself has recently disappeared, just like hundreds of children all over the world. And it's all because of Slender Man, of course. You know, this really makes no sense. Slender Man's online trail is too big and his victims too numerous for someone somewhere not to have noticed it. I'm not saying I expect law enforcement to suddenly believe in the supernatural, but there's no way at least one person, maybe more, didn't notice that all these missing kids have this interest in common and were all going to the same sites. One or more teams should be investigating the Slender Man aficionados community for being full of human traffickers and serial killers.

Hallie goes back to the woods and hands herself over to Slender Man... and then runs away. He sprouts what looks like spider legs and chases her, shaking his lame tentacles. Hallie gets closer and closer to a creepy tree with long branches that look just right to wrap themselves around a struggling teenage girl and pull her to it so she can be covered in branches until she's melded into the tree trunk. And that's exactly what happens. As Hallie dies, Lizzie wakes up. Again, how is that possible if Slender Man went after her because she summoned him herself?

The movie ends with Lizzie's voice-over telling the audience that the more people talk about Slender Man, the more the legend grows and the more power he has. This includes sharing photoshopped pics. The more power he has, the more he'll drive people crazy and make them do things. Hmm, that becomes a bit awkward when you think of the real life cases of teens going nuts.

This could've been good. Sadly, it wasn't. It doesn't help that the Slender Man figure works better as something in the background of a photograph than in motion. The tentacles were ridiculous and the connection with trees just seemed random. Really, why are his victims being fused to trees? Speaking of which, the characters were so underdeveloped and lifeless, even crazy Wren, that it was hard to care about them. Also, the fact that they kept summoning the movie's monster was so dumb that I feel like I owe an apology to Phantasm's idiot characters for all the mean things I wrote about them.

There's nothing memorable or interesting about Slender Man (2018). However, if you still want to see it, you can find it on Netflix. Because of course.

By Danforth