User blog:AustinDR/Slender Man (2018) Review

What an utter pile of trite this film was. At best, the acting was passable. There weren't any actors that I would say are phenomenal, but they were average. As for the visual effects, I will say that they were decent as well. As for the whole idea behind the Slender Man itself, I have no issues with because for there is little to no official backstory behind this internet boogeyman, so the film not really going into an explanation of what he is or where he came from is a nonissue.

What is an issue is characters. All of the characters in the film hardly have personalities aside from the cliché tropes that horror films use. Because of this, the film fails to keep you invested with the characters making their inevitable confrontation with the titular man in black lacking. This is one of the issues that several horror films share: these characters are not people. They are only there as disposable cannon fodder to be killed. As such, it's hard to care about the characters when they are in grave danger because you have no reason to.

The film uses the same tired horror tropes that most average horror films employ such as using loud noises or jumpscares. Ultimately, they do nothing to mix it up or add a new spin on it. The Slender Man itself even looks bad given how it is poorly CGI-rendered. It could give one memories of 2017's The Bye Bye Man because it looks like the developers of the film took a snap of Slender Man from that 2012 game and poorly implemented it into the movie.

Unsurprisingly, Slender Man is another bad film brought to you by Sony Pictures that is around four or five years too late. At the very least, the film is a riot to laugh at.

Final score: 3 out of 10 stars