I feel like I need to explain myself whenever I make a bad movie decision. Right now - August 11th - Movie Pass is on its last legs. It has changed its service from a movie a day for $9.99 to 3 movies a month for the same price. This goes into effect on August 15th. So, seeing as how I see more movies than probably any of you reading this - I'm going to abuse the last days of my movie/day deal. This, however, includes me seeing movies that I wouldn't normally see - which just so happens to be Slender Man. Okay. Now that that's out of the way, I want to take the rest of this paragraph to share my utmost respect for Slender Man's director Sylvain White and writer David Birke. I give the two of you the most emphatic standing ovation. Why? Because here I am - for the last twelve years trying to become a writer. I've written over a dozen scripts, each time trying to hone my craft and make something worthy of Hollywood's attention and money. I constantly re-write. I'm always doing research and character outlines and making sure my attention to detail when it comes to my screenplays is as crisp and perfect as humanly possible. But you guys... you guys didn't do any of that. You wrote and directed a movie that showcased just how little you care about not just the story, but anyone witnessing it. You've haphazardly collected a bunch of words on what I can only assume was written in crayon on the back of a box of crackers and called it a script. You cast a bunch of people you duped with money and filmed them with one direction - "look scared and I don't give a shit what else you do." You conned production companies to give you money and mass produce your busted anal fissure of a movie. You must be the two most brilliant figures in Hollywood and have shown me the light. I've failed thus far because I've cared too much. You've succeeded by giving the same amount of energy toward your Hollywood careers as a three year old does at passing a quantum physics test. So, as much as I want to tell you both to go eat an entire bag of stale dick-sliders with a side of fries... instead, you get my respect and applause.
You've all heard of the Slender Man myth, right? It started on some two-bit hack-ass website (something about Creepy Pasta) featuring blurry photos and drawn pictures of a tall scary dude with long arms and no face. The pictures themselves were unsettling, but what really brought the myth of the American forefront was the real life event of two young girls (who have now been diagnosed with severe mental illnesses) who took their friend out into the woods and stabbed her multiple times because they thought Slender Man told them to do so. Now, Hollywood has cashed in on this creature, constructing a film out of a picture and bunch of sad assholes on the internet lending their mythos to the story. It's not a bad idea. I mean, it's a creepy idea. And there's plenty of internet fodder out there to use in constructing something truly terrifying. However, this would've had to have been done by someone with any talent or drive and we already know White and Birke simply scoff and piss all over insinuations of "talent". Why do any research or try to figure out what actually scares people in 2018 when you can vomit consonants and vowels onto a crusty used paper bag and call it a script? Because the truth is, when it comes to the Slender Man movie - there is no story. There are no characters. And there sure as hell aren't any scares.
Make no mistake here, folks. It's hard to not give a shit as hard as these two fucking bozos don't give a shit. Because when you make a bad horror movie, 9 times out of 10 you make a great comedy. There's a reason Happy Death Day and Truth or Dare did so well at the box office - it's not because they're engaging scary movies. It's because they're so bad, they're hilarious. Slender Man doesn't even have the common fucking decency to be so-bad-it's-funny. It's so utterly lazy and pointless that you can't even laugh at it. Most lazy horror movies rely on "jump scares" in order to keep your attention. White and Burke say "fuck that nonsense... we're not even going to attempt to scare you, even in cheap ways! Taste our asses!" Like, it's crazy how hard they work to NOT scare the audience. And I'm not talking about me, a 30-year-old horror movie fan. I'm talking I could show this movie to an entire theater of 8-year-olds and even they'd be demanding their hard-earned milk money back (if they hadn't fallen asleep first).
Slender Man is legitimately one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I don't use that phrase lightly, but I also mean it wholeheartedly. I could blame it on studio interference because the first trailer of the film shows nearly a minute's worth of scenes that aren't even in the movie. But, it wouldn't matter. All that would change about the film is its 93 minute run time (which feels like spending nearly eight years of your life in the middle of the desert with only Cholula to drink) would be even longer and my thoughts of suicide would only get stronger. There's nothing to latch onto in the film. Birke writes teenage girls the way he THINKS teenage girls talk and act - which of course is the complete opposite of the way teenage girls talk and act. You need proof of this - there's actually a scene where a teenage girl... in high school... goes to the library to research a book (Google apparently doesn't exist), gets frightened, pulls out her phone and DIALS HER FRIEND'S NUMBER FROM MEMORY. I don't even know my own mother's phone number by heart, and I can't remember that last time I physically dialed someone's phone (that, and she only dials six numbers - seven numbers would've expressed an effort for accuracy that simply doesn't exist). They also give Slender Man absolutely nothing to do. The reason he's so creepy on the internet is that he's blurred in the background of old-timey pictures. Seeing the dude in clear view doesn't do him any justice. So how is he supposed to creep you out in the movie? Well here's a list of some things Slender Man has the ability to do: He can make the wood from trees in the forest creak semi-loudly, he can move under doors in shadow, he can imitate the voices of the girls, he can make a short hallway... look like a long hallway, and... AND... he can SKYPE. This motherfucker actually SKYPES these chicks... TWICE!
The effort White and Birke put into the film is more than insulting, but they have gotten a film into the mainstream. They know the secret and when you're the one with your ass in the seat watching their cinematic equivalent of nut cancer, the joke is apparently on you - and me. So, for only the second time in the six year run of Big Peck's Cineplex, Slender Man has earned itself an...
F
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