That said, I'm going to segue into my best of starting this week, with music- just in time for the Grammy's. Next week, I'll do TV, then movies the following week. I hope to have all of this done by the Oscars, so whatever Oscar bait type movies I haven't seen by then... will just have to wait.
After that, as they say, it's back to our regularly scheduled programming. But keep an eye out for the odd review, as I am also watching stuff that doesn't have a chance in hell of making my best of the year- like the following film. 😝
Contrary to what some might have you believe, the Slender Man is actually a relatively new concoction. Created by Something Awful forum user Eric Knudsen (aka Victor Surge), the fictional character began as an internet meme before users took the character and ran with it, creating artwork, doctored films of Slender Man "sightings" and sharing their own tales of run-ins they or people they knew had with the sinister being. All of which were, of course, completely made up.
Slender Man might have remained an in-joke meme had it not been for the real-life tragedy that occurred in 2014, in which two 12-year-old girls lured a friend of theirs into the woods and nearly stabbed her to death, all in the name of making a "sacrifice" to Slender Man. Legitimately creepy stuff, and I can't recommend the ensuing documentary by HBO, Beware the Slender Man, enough for those who are interested in finding out more.
Given all this, perhaps a horror movie based on the character was inevitable, albeit in questionable taste, given what happened IRL. Of course, it's hardly the first time such a thing has happened- witness the godfather of all such tales, The Amityville Horror, which, lest we forget, involved a very real case of murder, in which a man slaughtered his entire family in the notorious Amityville home.
While what followed may have been a load of BS, there's no denying some horrific stuff went on in that house, providing nightmare fuel for who knows how many films since. Likewise, the real-life "Ghost Hunters," the Warrens, who were also involved in the Amityville case, have inspired an entire franchise of films, which kicked off with the Conjuring series.
Slender Man, the movie, is not technically based on any of the real-life cases that emerged after the fictional character took on a life of its own beyond the internet, though I'd argue that there's a great movie to be made from the most notorious of those incidents. Rather, much like the character itself, it's a complete work of fiction.
It revolves around a group of girls who, after getting wind of the whole Slender Man legend, decide to watch a mysterious video online which can reportedly "summon" him. Now, I know what you're thinking: why would anyone want to do such a thing in the first place? Well, as we know from real-life occurrences, such things have been known to happen, even if, in reality, it's complete BS.
Of course, this being a horror movie, it actually works, and soon after watching the Ring-lite vid, the girls start having visions of Slender Man dancing in their heads. But is it real, or are they just highly suggestible and freaking themselves out over nothing? They get an answer of sorts when one of them, Katie (Annalise Basso, Occulus, Ouija: Origin of Evil), turns up missing about a week later.
The girls start frantically looking for clues, while Katie's father (Kevin Chapman, TV's Rescue Me and Person of Interest) goes off the rails, drunkenly breaking into the house of Hallie Julia Goldani Telles, TV's Bunheads and The Affair), who he blames for Katie's disappearance, for some unknown reason.
Before too long, one of the other girls, Chloe (Jaz Sinclair, Paper Towns, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) starts acting strangely- or stranger than usual- after the girls attempt to contact Slender Man yet again, hoping to barter "something they love" for the return of their friend. Needless to say, that doesn't go so well.
High-strung Wren (Joey King, The Conjuring, Wish Upon) does her due diligence on Slender Man at the local library, but aside from learning some key elements of how the Slender Man thing works, she doesn't do anyone much favors beyond freaking them out even more. Will the girls get their friend back, or die trying?
I won't spoil anything for you here- not that there's much to spoil really, as the film goes off the rails as it goes along, clearly the results of re-shoots and elements added late in the game which ensure a disjointed end result. Reportedly, the studio wanted a PG-13 film, but the film received an R, hence the re-shoots.
Unfortunately, the new scenes contradict some of what's going on within the film, and leave certain characters' fates hanging. Note the trailer, which features scenes not shown within the film, such as the deaths of Chloe and Tom (Alex Fitzalan, The Society), Hallie's love interest, and the bit with the girl emerging from the woods, which were removed altogether after they didn't "test" well. Too bad, as that trailer is scarier than the entire resulting movie.
Factor in the fact that the father of one of the girls involved in the stabbing incident I mentioned protested the film and urged a boycott on it, and by the time the studio begrudgingly opted to release it, some theaters wouldn't even show it and the studio itself hardly promoted it.
Much less did they screen it for critics- though the latter is nothing new for horror films in general, which are rarely screened for critics, so as to maximize the money they make before word gets out it's a stinker, assuming it is one. This one is, but maybe it didn't have to be. For one thing, they could have at least released the original cut on DVD/Blu-Ray. (It does feature some deleted scenes, however.)
But what I saw was a film with potential that goes progressively off the rails as the meddling by the studio becomes more and more readily apparent. As such, the end result is often confusing and lacks continuity, for which the studio in question, Screen Gems (and, by extension, parent company Sony), have only themselves to blame.
One has to wonder, given their lack of faith in the product, why they committed to it in the first place. After all, the stabbing incident happened back in 2014, so it's not like they were unaware of it, or that it was just a case of unfortunate bad timing, such as what happened with Eli Roth's remake of Death Wish, which was released in the wake of several school shootings.
Nope, this came nearly four years after that incident happened, so they had plenty of time to back out if they didn't want to be associated with it, as they claimed in retrospect. Honestly, it seems more like a case of "too soon," and once the film tested poorly, the studio just eliminated a lot of the scary stuff and did a few re-shoots and slapped together what one sees here.
It's too bad, as there is absolutely a solid horror film to be made from the whole Slender Man mythos, or even the real-life incident with the girls. Filmmakers just might want to wait a beat before going there with the latter. Also, whoever makes it needs to get a studio behind them willing to really commit to it, or don't even bother.
As it stands, Slender Man, the movie, has some decent cinematography (by Lucca Del Puppo, of Emelie and The House That Jack Built fame), solid enough direction (by Sylvain White, who did the nifty flick The Losers a few years back), and a likable cast, headlined by Scream Queen-in-the-making Joey King and a down-to-earth turn by Telles. What it doesn't have is scares or a logical script- though, as pointed out, through no fault of the cast and crew.
Nope, this one positively reeks of studio interference, I'm afraid. Maybe the initial result might not have been a masterpiece, but I'm a firm believer in realizing a filmmaker's vision, and I hate it when producers and studios take things out of their hands and meddle with it.
Lest we forget, the likes of Harvey Weinstein was infamous for that sort of thing, and what a role model he turned out to be, lol. I say let the film sink or swim by the vision of the writer and director- after all, you're the one who signed off on it in the first place, so if you didn't like it, you shouldn't have. I'm not saying that the occasional re-shoot isn't necessary, but not to the point of making the resulting film nonsensical.
Slender Man doesn't quite end up being completely incoherent, but there are an awful lot of plot threads left dangling that didn't have to be, and more importantly, it isn't remotely scary.
If anything, the only really chill-inducing stuff in it was derived from the initial source material, which is to say, the art, videos and so forth that the character originally inspired, and all of that is present and accounted for in the documentary, which is way more disturbing, being real and all.
So, yeah, my advice is to stick with Beware the Slender Man, and skip this one, unless you're so obsessed with the character you have to see it all. Of course, if that's true, then you already probably saw this, so my opinion won't matter. For the rest of you, this one is imminently skippable, which is probably why I did in theaters.
For the record, it did alright at the box office, grossing $51 million on a budget that started out at around $10 million, but reportedly ended up costing closer to $30, on account of all the re-shoots. Critics and audiences alike trashed it, resulting in a paltry 11% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Probably the only ones out there scared by it were the teens that flocked to it in theaters- but I suspect even they weren't that impressed and wish they'd stayed home and just Googled "Slender Man" on the web, lol. Trust me, the stuff online is way scarier than anything you see here. Don't waste your time. 😖
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