It's not Slenderman himself that's scary, it's the alone-in-the-dark deafening silence and dread that made the game frightening. Freddy Krueger was scary in the first Nightmare because they didn't focus on the character, but rather the psychological terror. Slenderman tries and fails to build a story around something that only needed to bring a feeling. It tried to get us involved in the lives of shallow and boring cookie-cutter horror-movie fodder characters. The horror genre needs to be left to the artistically gifted and intelligent artists. Slenderman is yet another mass produced generic label product waiting to be forgotten. Watch the trailer, it's way better than the movie. Or better yet, watch The Ritual for a better example of what Slenderman should have looked like.

Currently, "Slender Man" has the distinction of being on IMDB's infamous Bottom 100 List...the 100 worst rated major release films. While I certainly didn't enjoy the film, it seems odd that this one made the list when there are so many worse modern horror films which somehow avoided the list. I just can't see this as the 50th worst film....let alone 500th.

The idea of the film is taken from a pre-existing story of a 'Slender Man' who will kill or make folks crazy who are dumb enough to call upon him. In many ways, the film is a very derivative project--using the existing notions as well as infusing it with ample parts "The Ring" as well as the "Bloody Mary" story that's been floating around for decades. With "Bloody Mary", a person supposedly calls the name out repeatedly until some murderous other worldly thing appears.

The story begins with four very dumb high school girls having a sleepover. They find some info on the internet about a Slender Man and despite being warned, they summon the creature...and the rest of the film is about them each disappearing or going mad one after the other.

The movie has a scary style to it, with its pulsing music and bass....though after a while it does become annoying instead of scary. The story itself is nothing new...consisting of lots of ideas from other stories, urban legends and films. The acting and direction are fair. My only serious complaint is that I wish it HAD been awful...that would have made it a lot more interesting.

Despite 'Slender Man' being one of the year's most poorly received films, more than once cited as one of the worst films of 2018, the premise was actually really intriguing and did have potential to work. So this is not coming from someone who wanted 'Slender Man' to fail, far from it. Also have an appreciation for horror and saw it with an open mind, just want to make all of that clear before somebody else tries to invalidate and criticise the opinions of those who disliked it.

Seeing it, 'Slender Man' turned out to be that bad, for me it is one of the year's worst along with 'The First Purge' (have seen a lot of 2018 films so this is hardly coming someone hopefully with a sheltered life) and deserving of the panning it's gotten. Not quite worst of SyFy or The Asylum bad, it's not as amateurish, intelligence-insulting or non-trying-ish. It is however difficult to believe that it got a cinema release when it could easily pass for direct to video.

The only halfway decent things with 'Slender Man' are the spooky setting and the atmospheric and moody lighting.

Both not shining as much as they should have done, thanks to camera work that's at times chaotic and at other times self-indulgent, sloppy editing that made me physically ill and nausea-inducing use of flashing images. The sound is over-bearing and too obvious that it affects the horror.

It is also very cheesy and awkward-sounding in the dialogue. The direction is pedestrian and while the cast try gamely their performances are thin and ill-served by having little to work with, clunky script-writing and poorly developed and bland characters doing them in.

Worst of all is the story and the atmosphere. On top of not being "fun", 'Slender Man' fails badly at its two main objectives, being scary and being interesting. There is no tension, suspense or sense of dread for the horror to work, the reactions are too indifferent, the pacing is deadly dull and there is far too much of an over-reliance on jump scares, all without build up and incredibly predictable.

From start to finish, 'Slender Man' feels like a short film over-stretched to lifeless breaking point. As said there are real issues with pacing and that there is far too little in the storytelling to sustain the length. The content is not substantial enough and too much of it is nothing new and sometimes pointless, with the horror elements failing badly the paper thin story and the predictable, disinterested way it's told makes for a real slog of a film.

Overall, lifeless, very bland and poorly made. 2/10 Bethany Cox