Slender man
Slim pickings
released OUT NOW! 15 | 93 minutes
Director sylvain White Cast Joey King, Julia Goldani Telles, Jaz sinclair, annalise Basso
Both cinema and urban legends are crammed with creepy creatures summoned either knowingly or unwittingly by foolish mortals: Candyman, Bloody Mary, the girl from The Ring. Slender Man was born online, the creation of Eric Knudsen (aka Victor Surge), and after a couple of previous outings in small independent films (and videogames), here he – one assumes, because of the name, since the entity has no face – gets his big studio chance. Sadly, it’s pretty thin gruel.
Featuring a host of ideas stolen from other, better horror movies, Slender Man forgets to take the scares too. It boils down to a bunch of annoying teens bringing the terror upon themselves, then the usual assortment of bargain basement boo-scream moments, fake-outs and freak-outs. All these are occasionally intercut with long shots of trees (horror via Terrence Malick?) and bursts of score that sound like someone leaning on an old Casio organ.
There is one kernel of a good idea here about Slender Man as a virus infiltrating the world through the stories about the people he’s caused to disappear, and there are a couple of effective chiller scenes, but the film seems unlikely to have much impact in the crowded world of cine-horror.
Slender Man performer Javier Botet’s Crimson Peak co-star Doug Jones played the character in 2015’s Always Watching.