Slender Man Blu-ray Review

THE MOVIE — 0/5

Plot Synopsis: A quartet of bored high school friends thought it’d be all giggles if they went online to discover how to summon the shadowy, willowy child predator whispered of in internet myth. Their search results, however, came up with unholy terror, as visions of the Slender Man began to fill their waking moments as well as their nightmares-from which there was no hitting “escape.”

Review: “Slender Man” is a meme/urban legend that began back in 2009 as part of a Photoshop contest, but took a far darker and more notorious connotation being linked to the 2014 stabbing of a girl by her two friends, who believed the tall thin lanky pale and faceless man needed to prove their loyalty to him by killing somebody, later to live as his servant in his mansion. Thankfully, the girls’ victim did survive and they are now serving time in a mental institute with a jury finding them not guilty by reason of insanity. (source: Wikipedia) As a side, I highly recommend the HBO documentary, Beware the Slenderman, utterly creepy and disturbing.

So, with that short bit of history in mind, it was certainly perplexing that Sony (through their Screen Gems studio) would even consider moving forward with the Slender Man feature film, albeit this was not based on the stabbing and instead takes the clichéd PG-13 teen thriller route with mundane, dull, muddled and confusing results.

I will say, my disdain for Slender Man has less to do with the true events aspects and instead grading it on the film itself, in which case despite being under 90-minutes long (sans credits), this was an absolute chore to sit through, and that includes being able to pause in order to refresh my drink, so I can’t imagine seeing it in theaters. The acting is pretty bad, however in their defense, they were saddled with a poor screenplay, written by David Birke (whose resume includes Freeway Killer and 13 Sins), and even worse, wooden dialogue.

But beyond that, the plot in and of itself makes little sense and doesn’t go beyond some lanky dude who creeps around the woods and kidnaps young people. Why? Who the hell knows, this movie didn’t. Sure, the film does try having one of our characters link the Slender Man to some 16th century lore or something. Again, does not make a lick of sense, seemingly the director (Sylvain White who helmed the illustrious horror film I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer) was going for style over substance, but even on that front the film fails, particularly the finale which is so dark that it was difficult to see what was happening, I have to assume this was to cover the uninspiring visual effects for Slender Man himself.

Slender Man is a movie that should not have ever been made. Not only is it a few years too late but it’s really not all that terrifying and the one fright it got out of me was the cursed jump scare. This was an incompetently made movie that lacked any of the creep factor not to mention thinly written characters.

SPECIAL FEATURES – 1.25/5

This release comes with a glossy slip cover and inside is a redemption code for the Digital HD copy. The only feature is Summoning Slender Man: Meet the Cast (9:04; HD) behind-the-scenes featurette.

Previews – Searching, Sicario: Day of Soldado, Patient Zero, Venom, The Equalizer 2, Insidious: The Last Key

VIDEO – 3.75/5

AUDIO – 4.5/5

OVERALL – 1.0/5

Overall, Slender Man was a poorly conceived project where there’s not even a good idea at its core, but even besides that, its several years too late and given the darker connections to the character should have given the studio some pause before moving forward with the project. The Blu-ray itself has good video and surprisingly impressive audio, though the bonus material is rather light.