Film of the Week: Slenderman

We’ve read the Creepypasta, and the subsequent stories to expand the lore, we’ve played the games; it was inevitable a film would come along. The most popular creepypasta character on the internet, Slenderman proves to be just as scary as it was when first introduced. Starting out as an internet competition to create paranormal images, “Victor Surge” went one step further and added lore subsequently putting context to the image. From that point forward, it has developed into an internet phenomenon.

As a horror film, Slenderman is disturbingly scary, but not for the right reasons. It does it’s to scare us through atmospheric moments, expanding upon Slenderman’s notable mysterious figure who hides in the shadows. The sound effects do help boost the effect, and there are a few added features such as the room bending and twisting, but that’s all the film has to offer. Once you’re over the initial first incident between the characters and slenderman, any subsequent “meetings” are the same as before, rendering them dull.

The character of Slenderman offers a unique story for the horror genre, yet unfortunately all we’ve been given is a clichéd story with unoriginal jump scares. The concept and fictional entity that is Slenderman offers the filmmakers the opportunity to make it one of the scariest horror film ever, but the many controversies surrounding the film during production prevented that from happening.

The only notable good points about this movie is the acting and the occasionally good special effects when emphasising Slenderman’s powers. Other than that, despite being released by a big company such as Sony, it’s reeks with amateurish horror with a big enough budget to have some uniqueness.

The continuity throughout is terrible. There’s more that we don’t know why it’s happening than we actually see on screen. There may be a few instances of good transitions between scenes, but those are rare – the rest of the time, we’re presented with nothing but poor storytelling. It tries to pander toward those who already know the fictional character than those who don’t, which automatically cuts out any form of exposition, just going from one jump scare to another, which by the third or fourth disturbing effect had become boring. Any and all attempts at explaining was fleeting and hard to fully understand, therefore rendering us even more confused that we already are, therefore whilst trying to catch up and piece together what’s happening from one scene to the next, we’re taking our focus from the film itself.

In amongst all of that, however, there is a vague representation of what the filmmakers were envisioning. Maybe if they hadn’t of used the character Slenderman, the film would’ve been better. They would’ve had to rework and tweak pretty much every scene, but using a different fictional character – preferably an original one – the film would have been what this one was trying to portray.

I do not recommend this film in any way.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)