Slender Man

Not gonna lie, I wrote this film off a long time ago.  I remember when I saw the first trailer months ago, it had a massively desaturated look and seemed to be showcasing some harsh imagery.  Then the title appeared, and I stifled a laugh.  “Come on,” thought I, “are you guys actually making a Slender Man movie?  Get real!”  Sure, I was intrigued to see how what the trailer showed would be incorporated into a story about Slender Man, or how they would go about making a credible Slender Man story at all, but my confidence in seeing anything close to good was minimal at best.  Expectations sank further when I saw that it was to be rated PG-13.  “Here we go again with this shit.”

Then I saw the film.

The story centers on a group of four friends: Wren (whose parents named her for the bird, rather than taking the Even Stevens or Ren & Stimpy route, ’cause I guess they hate her (we never see them, so you never know)), Chloe, Hallie, and Katie.  These girls aren’t your usual teen-flick fodder, as they drink Stoli and watch and mock internet porn together; they’ve got a generally “cool” vibe, were they to have come of age in my generation.  On a lark, they stoop to summoning Slender Man, this generation’s equivalent ton Bloody Mary, it seems.  To do so, they watch a video online, some crazy images flash before them, and then things go progressively sideways in their minds.  They’re thrust onto a path of trying to elude or defeat the Slender Man before they become his victims.

Credit where credit’s due, this isn’t nearly as bad as I expected it to be.  Unlike trash-can horror lately (like Truth or Dare and its inane ilk), the people behind Slender Man actually tried to take things seriously and establish an atmosphere for the scares.  Director Sylvain White may have taken an odd road to get here, starting out with things like Trois 3 (yeah, they made three of those films), I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (AKA apparently this franchise’s dead horse wasn’t sufficiently tenderized yet), Stomp the Yard, and the fun-yet-forgettable The Losers (not to mention the video for the K-Ci & JoJo classic “Crazy”), and working with a number of TV shows, but he seems pretty comfortable here.  The narrative is told fairly smoothly and cleanly, and there’s a strong sense of atmosphere at play.  This is aided by the score from Brandon Campbell and Ramin Djawadi, who lean heavily on creepy minor-key tones and the addition of mildly dissonant sounds, and the cinematography of Luca del Puppo, who’s gone from a long string of Funny or Die shorts to a strong effort here:  The emphasis is on muted vibrancy, like a fancy old study lit only by fireplace, candelabra, or dim, amber-shaded lamps, and there’s plenty of nigh-on theatrically-styled lighting and staging going on (case in point: the library scene’s opening), with special mention going to a shot lit exclusively by police siren lights through a window, showcasing some spectacular cinematic chiaroscuro and visual presence.  I could have done without the lens flares, but they weren’t J.J. Abrams-style distracting.  The acting is mostly pretty solid, though Joey King (from Wish Upon and Ramona and Beezus) seems to be in a different film from everyone else, slightly overdoing it with the histrionics and whatnot.  It’s not bad, just kinda distracting.  There are also some interesting perspective shots, as though the filmmakers took plenty of notes during classic Sam Raimi flicks, but these only go so far.

Which brings me to the ultimate failing of the film.  Despite the positives listed above, the film falls flat.  Y’know, you might be able to say it’s because of those positives.  See, unlike the worthless horror tripe that we tend to get, this film tries.  And it kinda tries too hard.  Remember, the foundation of the plot is an internet creepypasta-based creature, so it’s not like we’re working with all that much to begin with.  The film somehow transports us to a parallel Earth where Slender Man isn’t just a lame creepypasta thing, but more of a Bloody Mary-style urban legend that’s apparently real for these girls.  There’s an inherent disconnect formed there, ’cause these contemporary and ostensibly internet-savvy teens are treating internet boards and viral-style videos much more seriously than they would in actuality.  They buy into the legend extremely quickly and genuinely, for no real reason at first.  And they seem rattled by the inciting video, even though it’s a tame, Ring-esque collection of crazy images and discordance, something that’s pretty old hat these days.  But these girls are down a dark rabbit hole, and everyone’s playing it as straight as possible.  It’s the opposite end of the spectrum from, say, Wish Upon, which was too contrived and doofy to be taken anywhere near seriously; this one is so earnest and dour about a doofy subject that it’s also difficult to really take seriously.  We’ve gone too far in our course corrections, cap’n.

And it’s when this overt over-earnestness mixes with overused, trashy horror tropes that the film really careens over the edge.  We get oddly-motivated characters (for example, why do they sneak around in their disappeared friend’s house again, especially when the distraught father looks willing to talk?); dialogue that has a bad habit of stating the strongly implied or visually obvious; characters that take everything at face value and without excess thought or concern; and a heavy reliance on jump scares.  (In addition, the bell sounds we hear when the Slender Man draws near sound eerily similar to sound files used in the game Dead by Daylight.)  In fairness, the jumps aren’t quite as obnoxious as elsewhere (I’m looking at you, trailer for The Nun), really more like half jump scares (demi-jumps?), but there’s a bunch of them, seven when taken as whole counts during a ninety-three-minute runtime.  Much of this seems due to the trope-entranced script from David Birke (of Gacy, Dahmer, and 13 Sins fame), but it’s helped along by the over-earnestness of the other filmmakers.  We get some nicely subtle bits of Slender Man’s influence and presence, like a stretching shadow behind the protagonists, but the camera angles always draw far too much attention to these bits, draining them of their subtlety and effectiveness.  (Hereditary handled this sort of thing extremely well.)  In the end, it’s hard to take this collection of jump scares spurred on by an internet video all that seriously, and thus the narrative mostly fails, despite the clear effort on display.  It’s more Rings 2 than anything like a return to The Ring, so to speak.

My mind did go somewhere rather interesting as I watched this, though, and I came up with a different reading than merely the superficial:  This film could be taken as a metaphor for teen drug abuse.  Stay with me now.  There’s the turn to harder drugs after already partaking in the taboo alcohol before it was legal to do so; the social glamorizing of the drug use, spurred on by idiots on the Web; the various downward spirals experienced by the respective girls; the toll it takes on their lives and those of their families; and even the threat of addiction latching onto the younger, impressionable sister who’s eager to emulate her elder sibling.  This interpretation is a lot more interesting than the Slender Man’s Sinister-like mythos (which apparently includes the Pied Piper of Hamelin now, I guess), and if there were some subtle winks to the audience regarding it, I would think much more highly of this film.

Unfortunately, it’s just a melodramatic, overwrought mess of a film that somehow wastes its positive aspects and the effort of its filmmakers.  Frankly, even though I didn’t like it all that much, I’d still prefer horror like this over shallower jump-scare-fests lacking character any day of the week.  I can’t recommend this at all, really, but if it sounds intriguing in some way, it won’t be the worst horror movie you’ll have seen this year.