Slender (2016)
Ted Hentschke
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Starring Joel Petrie, Dan Schovaers, and Mili Parks
Directed by Joel Petrie
Is there any combination of words more bilious than “Slenderman” and “Found Footage?” A tired meme coupled with an even more tired style, it’s a destined to fail match made in hell. And for some reason, people just cannot stop making it. Be it feature film, fan project, movie, or game, it seems like mortal brains simply cannot fathom a world where a mysterious white-faced slender figure just out of focus doesn’t make a mess of all of your nice electronics.
It all started earnestly enough as a “Something Awful” series of images and short stories, where I’m now convinced it should have died. It was cool when it was vague, a concept free enough from full realization to plague the fringes of our overly active imaginations. As the numerous fan projects and cash-ins have shown us, there is only so thin you can stretch a child-stealing slender individual before it breaks. Even the initially interesting and undeniably genuine “The Marble Hornets” has written itself so far into a corner that it had to totally rebrand as “Clear Lakes 44.”
Christ, it hurts to say this, but Slender: The Arrival might actually be the best version to date. I trash on the game pretty hard, but at least it isn’t objectively a waste of time. At least it isn’t an obvious attempt to ride the coattails of other successful Slenderman products. At least it displays some modicum of talent and creative vision. At least it’s actually scary. At least things happen. At least you actually SEE Slenderman.
If I was being too clever and subtle, I’m implying that these are all things that Slender (2016) is not. Slender is an unoriginal, dry mess devoid of any scares or tension. It takes the first hour to even get to the “action” and another twenty minutes to realize that nothing actually happened in this movie.
The premise of Slender is that Joel wants to make a movie. As this is one of those “super real” found footage films, all the actors use their own names and play their own parts. Joel is the director, Dan is the editor, the sound guy is the sound guy, etc. Their motivation for making a “documentary” is something along the lines of “Well, we have a camera and no direction in life, might as well,” which I at least have to applaud for honesty. One day while on a train, Dan comes across a woman named Mili rambling about a mysterious “slender man” with no face that took her children, and bam, they have a documentary.
Time jumps to a few months later, and they have assembled a team to document their investigation into Mili and her missing children. She’s significantly calmer now, stating that she’s back on her meds and doesn’t remember her delusional ramblings. This leaves the crew disheartened and without direction. But wait! Joel finds some drawings in her kids’ room to imply that there might be something sinister involving a titular lengthy fellow! Perhaps there’s more to this “slender man” than they originally thought. To the internet!
So they google Slenderman and, in perhaps the most pandering scene of all time, begin to reference all of the other Slenderman “myths.” Since Slenderman is a meme and not a real thing, about 80% of this is bullshit about cave paintings, and the other 20% is them referencing the game/other videos. I can understand that they are trying to inject a bit of the real world into their found footage movie for authenticity, but I stopped caring about that the moment they put the words “Slenderman” and “is real” together. Through internet divination, the group discovers the rule for their bad guy, which is that “he can’t hurt you unless you believe in him, but if you know about him, he can make you believe.” It’s that kind of paranormal twist that sounded cool when you were twelve before you figured out what logical reasoning was.
If all of this sounds action-packed and riveting, I should mention that it takes about an hour. There are plenty of scenes of dudes talking to each other at bars, in empty rooms, and over Skype, just puttering the plot along at a pace that could generously be categorized as “conversational.” Nothing scary happens. Hell, nothing happens at all.
It’s after this point that the movie really shits its pants. Joel, eager to test the limits of reason, decides that the documentary is no longer about these missing kids, but the “nature of fear.” To this end, they construct a Slenderman costume and plan to lure the poor, possibly mentally afflicted Mili into the school her missing children attended to try to scare the shit out of her. Not wanting to sell their souls to the Antichrist, a couple of the cast members are predictably not okay with this. Joel’s compelling counterargument is along the lines of, “Nut up, we’ve got a movie to make,” so everyone just shrugs and says okay.
Now we’re finally at the “spooky” part of the film, where everything is washed in pallid green night vision and shots are rushed and nauseating. Mili arrives at the school and promptly disappears. The rest of the cast go looking for her and one at a time go poof as well. It’s all off screen, with the single visual scare being a moment where one of the girls looks at the camera and her face is all stretched Grave Encounters style.
At the very end we are treated to a shot of Joel looking into the camera, sobbing in a manner straight out of The Blair Witch Project, screaming, “It’s not real!” You know what, Joel, I wish you were right. I wish this whole thing wasn’t real. This movie, this trend, this character. The Slenderman craze has yet to produce a single real worthwhile film or game. I have watched Old Spice commercials with more action and a better plot than this film. It’s another weak found footage mess devoid of scares, banking on the character to bring in views. Do not waste your time.
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Slender
Categorized:Reviews
