SONY PICTURES RELEASING (2018)
Director: Sylvain White
Starring: Joey King, Julia Goldani Telles, Jaz Sinclair, Annalise Basso, Javier Botet
Years ago, via crazypasta, the Slender Man caused ripples across the internet and instantly became a digital legend with stories of child abduction, mass trauma, stalking and death at the hands of the tall, suited myth. What a hoot. A brutal stabbing of a young girl occurred in more recent times that led to two females being incarcerated in mental institutions after blaming the influence of Slender Man for their crimes. So in tried and tested fashion, Hollywood made a movie about it called...Slender Man.
It’s offensively shit.
In a grey filtered, angst-ridden hipster town, four young girls decide to pass the time during their clearly boring sleepover by watching a video about Slender Man – one that will apparently take over your soul as the Slender Man slowly takes hold over you. Of course, by watching the video, they are all targeted by the spindly soul snatcher and hilarious, I mean, horrific (snigger) incidents await the hapless teens…
The good things? The concept. A Slender Man movie COULD have been exceptionally thrilling as a horror flick, however, the controversy surrounding its release in light of the tragedies that came before ensured large portions of the movie were removed before released bringing the movie down to its 15/PG-13 rating. Would it have benefited all that much from a higher certification? It couldn’t have been any worse.
The rest of the movie is just covered with a blanket of dung. Everything is subpar or just plain awful. I really want to like Joey King, but her trend of appearing in utter horse dong continues here. The rest of the actresses lacklustre performances are horrendously exposed by a terrible script and cliché ridden, messy story. Everybody just seems bored or stressed to be on set. Visually the movie is life draining to look at – there’s a grey filter over every scene and when any effects kick in, they’re just as bad – overly edited, frantically paced or just bad. There’s one scene in particular where two teens are GETTING IT ON and the ‘shock’ moment that occurs had my screening erupt with laughter. It was bad.
No tension. No atmosphere. But there is plenty of millennial buzzwords and Twitter poll mentions because…that’s cool…isn’t it? I could smell the pumpkin spiced lattes from my seat.
Two more things. Firstly, who has themselves as a photo of JUST themselves as their laptop background? Secondly, do passwords mean nothing in this place? Everybody seems to know everybody else’s!
Apparently, had the offending scenes not been removed from the finished Slender Man movie, it would have been more cohesive and actually pretty good but that is now nothing more than conjecture. What we are left with is one of the worst movies I have seen in years. Nothing here works and I‘m just amazed this goats arse of a movie got any kind of release at all.
Take me Slender Man, for your calling is more appealing than remaining in this world with the Slender Man movie.
August 24th 2018