SUMMARY
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The most frustrating about Sylvain White’s Slender Man isn’t the very obvious fact that it is slender in scares but that it is slender in imagination.
Internet-age urban legend
The film’s premise has it all.
It has an internet-age urban legend, one that unfortunately resulted in real-life tragedies but could have been a wellspring of ideas. It has an intriguing setting, a small town whose residents are either satisfied with their rundown lives or couldn’t wait to leave and live elsewhere. Its characters are teenage girls who are curious, discontented of their current situations, and dumb enough to be lured into websites of very dubious integrity.
In all seriousness, Slender Man has all the makings of either a sophisticated mystery or a straightforward horror film of slasher flick leanings.
Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) is an example of a film that shapes a compelling mystery out of adolescent girls spending a normal day in a clearing famed for its rock formation suddenly disappearing without any logical explanation. Then there’s Bernard Rose’s Candyman (1992) which places its effective scares within a community where racial tensions are apparent.
Sadly, Slender Man doesn’t seem to know the gold mine it is sitting on.
It stubbornly latches on that lousy mythology, churning out the lousiest of scares that turn the interesting dynamic between its characters into something so bland and basic that it doesn’t register as anything at all. Its promise somewhat resonates in the earlier parts where the titular monster is only felt through rumors and suggestions, offering a route for the film to possibly explore a landscape where myth and reality gel from the perspective of its characters who just want to leave their boring lives.
However, as soon as the film lets go of its initial mystique and pits the slender man as the sole villain, it abandons everything that it has going for it.
Missed opportunities
The film is a sorry pile of missed opportunities.
It knows that there is an entire universe of eerie unknowns that it could have explored, with several scenes that suggest a world bigger than the gauntly conceived curse that beleaguers the film’s terrified girls. Early on, the film seems to be investing in creating a mood and mystique, writing in adults who may or may not have devious plans for their children or establishing some sort of worldwide conspiracy where the Slender Man is traced in various cultures and eras.
However, the film doesn’t follow through.
It stubbornly goes for the convenience of lazy scaring, relying on torturous amounts of darkness blending with its awful rendition of the titular monster. It is quite foolish of White to believe that the Slender Man, imagined by its creator Victor Surge as a faceless man whose overlong limbs are overshadowed by its awful fashion sense, is visually horrifying.
It isn’t. In fact, the film’s most unbearable moments are the ones where it attempts to squeeze horror from the carelessly visualized creature.
Immense bore
Slender Man is just an immense bore.
It doesn’t make sense. It is narratively confusing because its plot points are waylaid by its paltry attempts to sell its horror setpieces. It falters when it should be reveling in the dark mysteries that brought about such fanfare over an internet-age boogeyman. – Rappler.com
Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ Tirad Pass.
Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema.
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