Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

Slender Man Blu-ray Movie Review

"Slender Man" is the "Everyman" of the "Boogeyman" genre.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman October 30, 2018

What the world needs now isn't love, sweet love, but apparently another generic Boogeyman Horror movie because there aren't enough those to go around. Director Sylvain White's (Stomp the Yard, The Losers) Slender Man is the latest of countless many genre films in which some summoned humanoid creature wreaks havoc in the lives of a handful of teenage girls because they dared call out his name in an effort to spook up a slumber party and have a bit of fun with Internet urban legend. Unfortunately for them, the creature is real, not myth, and apparently thrives on those who dare make the mistake of speaking its name, either taking them for himself or leaving them a shell of who and what they once were. The movie is not even contrived. It's just a lazy, unimaginative spin through very familiar territory. There's not a shred of originality anywhere in the movie and not a smidgen of reason to watch.

High School besties Wren (Joey King ), Hallie (Julia Goldani Telles), Chloe (Jaz Sinclair), and Katie (Annalise Basso) decide to summon “Slender Man” at a sleepover. Legend has it that the evil takes victims as necessary while “the ones he leaves behind are messed up forever.” The creature infects a victim’s brain like a virus. Nobody escapes unscathed. The girls are frightened by the ritual as they perform it, but nothing happens in the moments after. In the coming days, though, they begin to notice things are changing. They’re throwing up, having nightmares, and their darkest thoughts linger. One day, Katie disappears, and the girls begin a frantic search that will lead them to dark truths and darker realities and encounters with the terrifying “Slender Man.”

In the world of cinematic Boogeyman movies, and those bogeymen who must be summoned by speaking their name in particular, Slender Man ranks pretty much near the bottom of the list. Ritualistic repeating of phrases has often been the cinematic means of summoning characters like Candyman and Beetlejuice and was even the way for Dorothy to get back home. The story of Slender Man involves mostly nonsensical summonings that point to the idea that the character in question somehow thrives like a virus, and that the Internet has facilitated its already long reach. But what happens if, say, these four girls from Massachusetts summon him, while at the same time girls in Montana, Malaysia, and Manitoba do the same? Maybe that's why it took a week or so for these girls to start realizing their troubles in the real world, not just in their visions and dreams. Or, maybe Slender Man has a magic sleigh that can take him all over the world in one night. After all, with the proliferation of the Internet, it's more likely that more people will be calling his name on a regular basis, and he'll need to make sure he can get to his victims ASAP. Busy guy!

In all seriousness, this is a terribly dull, lame, and tiresome movie full of Horror tropes. It's a repetitive, predictable, and lifeless bore. The faceless, malformed humanoid creature that titles the film haunts the girls' dreams and visions and eventually their realities. While they're fighting off bad thoughts and scary encounters, they investigate their friends' lives and come to realize that they've secretly been mixed up in the occult, that summoning Slender Man wasn't just a cheap slumber party thrill but a means to an end. The girls weep and wail and are eventually forced to face their own fears out in the woods, in a school library, even in their own bedrooms. The creature's arrival is announced by distant ringing bells of weird, malformed pitch, maybe meant to wake up the audience, to alert it that a scream or jump scare is imminent.

The cast at least gives the movie its all. The four girls share a believable chemistry and camaraderie. The audience can buy into their friendship, that their longtime togetherness is a bond that the title character tears apart, bit by bit, throughout the movie. As they disappear, truths are revealed, they are placed in harms way, and everything else that threatens to pull them apart does so, but the tests in some ways strengthen their resolve and their will. The collective, and individual, bonds only tighten. It's a minor miracle that the actresses can inject enough energy into a movie so devoid of it, that they can breathe life into a lifeless film, but they do. Unfortunately their best efforts cannot overcome the barrage of stale genre tropes that ultimately overwhelm the film and degrade it into a forgettable, almost laughable Horror bore-fest.

Slender Man Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Slender Man's 1080p image is fairly typical of a modern, higher end digital production. It's clean but not flat or glossy. Textural richness is apparent and good, basic, foundational details are strong, including core facial textures, clothing essentials, lockers in the school hallway, and natural details in wooded areas, which are fairly well defined even at night. The movie largely favors dark environments and handles black levels very well. Colors in brighter scenes are pleasing, favoring a robust neutrality that presents shades with little obvious tinkering, filtering, or other pushes away from normal. There are some spikes in noise in several lower light shots, notably a few at the 57-minute mark, but other source or encode maladies are essentially absent. This is a very nice presentation from Sony.

Slender Man Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For this DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack, surround channels carry some scattered, but effective, background ambience in school hallways and later in the movie during a ritual to summon Slender Man in chapter seven. Several action scenes towards the film's climax also deliver some substantial surround integration as well as a positive burst of low end energy. Conversely, some nicely integrated and surround intensive natural nighttime ambience that suddenly silences the title character's arrival prove effective, and the ringing bells are hauntingly a little more diffuse about the stage. Light, genre-typical stringy Horror score elements abound, stretching nicely through the stage and delivering positive clarity as necessary. Screams and other sounds of terror send chilling waves of intensity through the backs. The surrounds are also engaged with frequency to build a supportive sonic terror. Dialogue is clear and well prioritized with natural front-center location.

Slender Man Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Slender Man contains a collection of previews for other Sony Blu-ray releases and a single featurette: Summoning 'Slender Man:' Meet the Cast (1080p, 9:04). This is a basic behind-the-scenes piece in which the primary cast and crew recount the story, talk about the title character and the four girls who appear in the film, and the cast shares the joys of working together. This release ships with a Movies Anywhere digital copy but does not ship with a DVD. The release ships with a non-embossed slipcover.

Slender Man Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Slender Man is a slack and slogging Horror film that recycles already stale content and brings nothing new to the stable. The actors are spunky and spirited, but they cannot overcome one of the most trite genre films to release in some time. Sony's Blu-ray at least delivers a good technical experience, boasting quality 1080p video and an active 5.1 lossless soundtrack. Extras are unsurprisingly limited to a single supplement that mostly focuses on the film's strength: the four lead girls. Skip it.