The Failure of Slenderman (2018)

   At some point in our lives, most of us have probably seen a trailer for a new film that you just know has no chance of being good. For me, one of those movies was Slenderman 2018. Not only was Slenderman a dead concept when the movie was announced, but I failed to see how they could turn the character into a full movie . 

   After watching it, I don’t think anyone knew how to make the titular character into a movie. Instead of building the lore of slenderman it opts to bring him in a totally different direction which fails miserably. It steals ideas from The Ring; viewers watch a video to summon him and then slenderman kill you. Ultimately, it  turns a character that had a chance of being built upon and makes him into a spooky internet demon.

    the end the movie turned into a complete failure critically, not that everyone wasn’t expecting that. Taking into account all of its pitfalls,  was it possible to make the movie good in any way? While it would have been an uphill battle, I think it’s possible to make a decent Slenderman movie.          

     Slenderman as a monster is very interesting in the way that it was completely made by the internet. People created stories and lore for this character many years before the movie so we know that the character of slenderman had potential. Where the movie failed was the complete overhaul of him. Instead of building on and addressing the stories, the movie makes slenderman feel like any other character, like you could take him out and replace him with any other generic monster and it wouldn’t change much.

While we most likely will never see a “good” Slenderman movie, he still has potential as a character. But I doubt we will see a resurgence of this thirteen year old monster any time soon.