Slender Man, created in a Photoshop competition by Victor Surge on the Something Awful Forums, is depicted as a tall, thin humanoid without facial features and dressed in a black suit. But like so many modern phenomena born of the internet, Slender Man’s popularity was short-lived, replaced by new fears. (For those who may not know, creepypastas are horror-related images circulated around the internet, inspiring urban legends, YouTube videos and various forms of online media.) It’s a phenomenon distinctly belonging to the early 21st century, a viral form of campfire tales and cave drawings that speak as much to our willingness to seek out scares in any form as it does to the specificity of our contemporary fears. It’s a sad and surprising turn for the “creepypasta” internet sensation of 2009 that once held many a teen in its grip. Thursday night’s preview gross of $1 million is a sure sign that Slender Man is in store for a slim opening weekend before quickly disappearing from theaters. The film, distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing and directed by Sylvian White ( Stomp the Yard), was barely marketed, and its release date shuffle, the movie was originally set for a May 18 summer opening, didn’t promise good things to come. Screen Gems’ Slender Man quietly slinks into theaters this weekend with almost no buzz or fanfare. The cycles of popularity through which horror works are fascinating, though perhaps less fascinating to the studios that find themselves either ahead of the curve or behind the times. Found footage was the innovative jump-start the genre needed until audiences grew tired of a seeming gimmick.
Paranormal Activity was horror’s hottest property until it wasn’t. The popularity of Saw and similar movies came and went in a blink. Joey King of The Kissing Booth takes center stage and does her best (which isn't all that great) with the anachronistic dialogue written by a 50 year old man trying his best to capture the spirit of high school aged girls.While there are certain trends in superhero movies, action, and children’s films that remain consistent for long stretches of time, horror is fickle, particularly due to the outpouring of films from both the big studio and indie circuits that have the power to change the game. It's an utter waste of scream queen Annalise Basso who goes missing within the first 15 minutes despite her being the actress with the most credentials. Yet it not only fails to tell a compelling story in any regard to its ill-timed and criminally (literally) insensitive boogieman, but it also fails to deliver in the already lazy formula it is reliant upon. Month by month we see shitty jump-scare horrors all as indistinguishable from one to the next, promising some transient thrills with boring, boring, BANG dynamics. Also, it somehow fails to meet even the criteria of a film genre that has already relegated itself to lower than substandard expectations.
It's certainly a recording of actors talking and moving, but Slender Man lacks any pretense of artistic expression. Technically speaking, this might not fully qualify as a movie. "Like a computer virus that infects your hard drive, but instead of your hard drive it's your brain!"
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