Slender Man Review

Perhaps it’s my age, but sometimes I long for a simpler Internet; one of random flash animations and MySpace. It was in this iteration of the WWW that Creepypasta – horror-related legends that have been shared around the Internet – became popular.

Slender Man was one such tale, and quickly became one of the most well known. Even I was aware of him, having played the game Slender in 2012. That game scared the crap out of me. It isn’t surprising that a film was made about this character, but the timing was atrocious.

Slender Man was released in 2018. Not only did it miss the peak of the character’s popularity by six years, but it was also four years after several highly violent and troubling cases of young people claiming they were influenced by the character.

Money trumped sense. At least they made an interesting film though right?

Right?

Slender was a tense and panicky video game experience, with the scratchy ambient sounds and limited visibility key to setting the mood. The game gave you no clues on what to do or how to survive. There were jump scares, but they only worked because you were so on edge already.

Slender Man manages to negate all of this, providing a tension free experience with as much character as the antagonist’s face. The characters do exactly what you think they’ll do (i.e. be dumb) at every point. They’re frustrating, and give you no reason to root for them. The encounters themselves are inert, so whilst the titular character looks as you might expect, you just don’t care.

I considered leaving this review completely blank to convey my feelings on this complete non-event of a film. Alas, I’m not that brave. Plenty brave enough to sit through Slender Man though.