He wants us! (Slender Man 2018)

197.

Slender Man

 

 4/10

 

 

Bringing it back to horror, we are about to step into the world of the Slender Man. Over the years, mainly thanks to social media, I have seen a lot of pictures of this character and needy comments asking about a movie. People have finally had their prayers answered and have gotten a film adaptation of this internet phenomenon, which has actually claimed the lives of real people, who have become obsessed with this legend of ghost stories and photo-shop images. Not much promotion was put towards this movie due to the bad press it brings but lets step into the world and find out if it is anything near terrifying.

The movie begins, as many over my years on Earth have done, with a group of best friends in high school discussing their night and approaching a group of lads and asking the same. The lads are in for something secret though. One of the girls, Wren, who is instantly being seen as one of our darker characters, picks Hallie up, who is seen as our main leading lady. They head over to Katie's and along with Chloe, they hang out in their basement. Katie's dad is passed out pissed up on the couch. The girls discuss that the lads are trying to summon the Slender Man, a monster that is known to abduct children after they watch his video online. They must listen of the bells, which seem an integral part. They follow the rules and nothing happens. Straight away anyway. We are going to be weaned in, just as we are. Whilst they are summoning, we are given the history though, just in case anyone in the audience isn't aware.

A week passes and everyone is on a school trip at a cemetery. Bit of a random place to go. Katie is suddenly spooked by something in the tree line and heads towards it, disappearing to the group and the whole class is left there for hours whilst the police give a search. Hallie is back home with her sister Lizzie and they both here thumping and banging coming from downstairs. They get spooked and Hallie heads down to check it out. The audience is instantly waiting for a jump scare. Out pops Katie's drunken dad, who tries to attack her claiming that she got Katie into some occult business, before the police arrive and arrest him. The remaining girls head to Katie's to investigate, whilst Wren distracts her father, the other two head into her bedroom and take her laptop. They find videos on there of others who have encountered the Slender Man and the girls carry on to read messages from a chat with someone called 'AleeyCat93'. She had been messaging, finding out how to deal with the Slender Man. Hallie picks up the conversation, asking how to get Katie back. She is told that they would all need to give up something that is near and dear to them.

The girls head to the woods to give up some belongings and Wren has been getting some info on the situation, telling the girls that they all need to put blindfolds on and leave them on no matter what. As we expect, someone takes one off and it's Chloe. She runs into the woods until she comes face to face with the Slender Man and when the girls find her, she seems way to calm, claiming that she had lost a shoe. Soon after, Chloe stops heading into school when she sees a video on her phone of someone going through her own home, it leads all the way to her bedroom. Slender Man appears in her room and starts to choke her.

 We look into the mirror though and it appears as if she is choking herself. Wren and Hallie head over to Chloe's later, to make sure she is ok, only to look through the window and a little jump scare shows us that Chloe looks possessed, her eyes are sunken and she has clearly gone mad.

Two girls left without contact now but it's soon to be Wren's turn. She heads to the library to look for more help and when the lights go out, she is left with the light on her phone and a maze of books as Slender Man tracks her down. Touching her, she loses her face, causing her to run aimlessly until she bumps into an employee and everything goes back to normal. The next day, Hallie is approached by one of the lads, asking if she wants to hang out. She thinks she sees the Slender Man in the background bushes. Wren and Hallie then have an argument about the fact she is putting a boy over the Slender Man issue and when Hallie heads over to Tom's she is freaked out when she see nightmarish images. The lads never watched the video and she opens up to him about it all. Back at her house, Lizzie has a panic attack, shouting about the fact that 'he has no face'. Hallie knows that she has seen Slender Man too and after looking on Lizzie's laptop, we see that Wren has taken her into the woods to make contact.

Hallie heads straight over to Wren's to find all information about this stuff on her walls, one about a girl who was sent insane named Allison Riley, AleeyCat93. Wren is about to jump out of her window but is pulled back inside. She is guilty about what happened to Hallie's sister Lizzie. Lizzie came to her with interest of Slender Man and that he doesn't want their stuff, he actually wants them. He instantly pulls Wren out of the window with his tentacles. Hallie instantly heads into the woods to confront this 'thing'. When she sees the creature, she starts to back out and run for it. The creature runs around her, using its tentacles like a spider and finally grabbing her, dragging her in as it turns into a tree and fusing her within its body. Hallie is gone, along with her friends and Lizzie wakes up in hospital, reflecting on what has happened to her sister. The final images of Hallie are completely and utter weird, almost experimental images, but you'll just have to watch that bit.

 

Overall, this movie could be considered the Bland Man. There wasn't too much to get excited about or scared for that fact. If we start with the horror factor, this was pretty much at a minimum. If you knew this legend before, maybe it would be a little creepier for yourself but coming into this with a blank pallet, it didn't grip me. There could have been a few jump scares but only if they didn't lead up with such predictable context beforehand. The cast contained 100% newbies to me and they too didn't really grip me with each character, some even lead to frustration. They sound was probably one of the redeeming features for a horror but once again, got worn out when it was used every time in the same context. Trees cracking and clicking as we got to see the Slender Man just gave this feeling of repetition and a movie that I had seen somewhere else before. We knew something was going down every time we had a problem with the electricity. That goes for the rest of the storyline though. A group of friends, picked off one by one, a failed love interest scene and a younger sibling getting tied up in the madness. This movie failed on a number of levels and was doomed from the start with certain controversies. I don't think I'll be owning this one within my favourite genre. The good parts of this are very slender.