Film "What is going on?"...
...was my entire expression throughout the film. I watched this with extremely low, low, low expectations, and was extremely disappointed and confused. The acting was stale, the plot, which i could not follow, was ripped off from Marble Hornets, and the interference, while actually pretty good, was so frequent that you will have not idea what is going on. I understand that it is a fan film without a huge thousand dollar budget, which I know because the special effects were horrible and you can tell it was a white burlap sack was worn to emulate Slender Man's facelessness, and it was supposed to be a standalone film, not connected to the canon, but it was just horrible. The beginning was trying so hard to build suspense, but to just like another reviewer, there is a difference between building supsense (ex. Halloween 1978) and just horrible pacing. 0 five stars out ten stars.
Film Ripoff of a Superntural Episode just add Slenderman
This is a total ripoff of the second Episode of Supernatural "Wendigo". Right down to the character whose parents where taken by the Wendigo while he slept by the fire and woke up with scars in the morning. Other than that it is incredibly boring and not worth you time.
Film Several hours pass, during which nothing of note occurs.
As I tried to watch this bore-fest of a film I couldn't help but think toward the end, "This is what Marble Hornets would have been if it was made by a bunch of hacks". Its plot is an incredibly old one: bunch of generic stupid young people doing nothing interesting in the woods before they start getting killed by the monster. There's a reason that none of the good (or even bad, to my knowledge) Slendy series do that: the entire course of the story is a foregone conclusion. Someone will go missing. There will be debate on whether it's anything to worry about. There will be one guy who sees the monster and starts raving. At least one of them goes crazy. There's a crazy/paranoid/evil local. There's eventually screaming and shouting and cussing and flailing about. I think what happened with this film is that they thought they could save the plot of hundreds of bad movies if they just stuck the Slender man into it. MH, EMH, TT, ML Andersen, and all the other good series have actual mystery and intrigue.
One of the top-rated comments on the vid says something along the lines of "Yeah, it does start out slow, but you have that in any movie, you need filler". There's filler, and then there's straight-up wasting your time. The video distortion is extremely prolific, but it hardly ever pays off. And you can't tell me that all that time is for building up characterization. There's so many of them and nothing about them to make me care about them, because I know as I watch it that they're just cannon fodder. I care about even MH!Season1!Jay more than these people - least he knows when to shut the hell up and let the story move along.
Couldn't take it seriously when it was trying to be scary. The Slendy-Faceless Zombie things toward the end? Surprising, but not explained and not scary. Slendy hardly does jack and doesn't get nearly enough screen time. The fight scenes, often drawn out, don't seem real at all (and don't even get me started at the fake-ass gun effects). The ending was the only moment that was almost scary (not that it made sense, though). Also, as for the so-called money shot where Slendy "throws" a truck: Not even close to as good as it sounds.
Overall, don't watch this movie. It's a bad horror film with Slendy thrown in by people who likely had no idea what made MH et al good.
Film Not worth the watch.
Oh, Windigo, Windigo. You tried so hard but fell so short.
If the concept "a bunch of student filmmakers get caught up in a Slender Man horror story" sounds familiar, that's because a good chunk of this film is a Marble Hornets ripoff. That and trees. There's a lot of nature shots throughout the film. And what Marble Hornets did well, this film... doesn't.
The plot is an incomprehensible mess, the acting is wooden, the "fight" scenes are laughably fake, and the attempt at a scary twist ending is just silly. Roughly the first 40 minutes of the film adds nothing to the plot. It's kind of like the beginning of Cloverfield, except worse. The characters themselves are basically cardboard cutouts, they're all similar and there's really nothing to make us care about them, and the plot taking place in 2004 is an unnecessary point, not to mention that there's recent cars all over. Heck, Slendy's involvement in this is minimal, even more so than it should be for him. Why, exactly, he's even in this is a bit odd, as it seems like he's more-or-less a stand-in for another, more generic monster. Perhaps he needed the money for a new tie?
Not to mention the random faceless "zombies" at the end coming out of nowhere and making no sense. Besides being really narmy, all they do is provide a distraction from Slendy himself, who appears in the three worthwhile seconds of this film wherein he throws a truck and can be (vaguely) seen waving his tentacles about. Nice special effects, but it's the only enjoyable part of this entire film. The rest of the time it's hardly clear what's going on, and the random pacing makes this even more confusing. The end, which I alluded to earlier, features one of the characters being interrogated by police for some reason and something vague happens. I dunno if he's turning into another Slender Man or what, but it totally failed at being scary.
All in all, I give it half an Operator symbol out of five.
Oh, and what's with the comedic song being played during the credits of what's supposed to be a horror film? I mean, really?
Film Frankly Only the End is Close to Good
There is far too much time wasted on shots of someone carrying the camera with it pointed at the ground. This would be okay if they were running from something, but no, it's before Slendy even shows up. Which is around the 45 minute mark of a film only an hour and a half long.
The ending was where it got interesting, but the earlier parts had me zone out so much that I had no clue who I was supposed to be rooting for or what was supposed to be the problem. Still, the various zombie like proxies, or at least what I think are this film's interpretation of proxies, were an interesting idea and having Brandon suddenly lose it and try to kill...the director? Anyway, that was good. Though the "guy hits Slendy with a car" thing is kind of less awesome when it happens just off screen. Seriously, guys, you had the CGI talents for Slendy burning up but not getting hit with a car?
Frankly I feel the Stinger just should have been its own short. It felt genuinely creepy and was horrifying to hear how Brandon spoke and then suddenly have him turn into a new Slender Man was well done. True, less context on its own, but it's a trade-off.
Overall this feels like it should have been much shorter, what with the first half being almost entirely disposable beyond the Windigo exposition bit. It feels like they were trying to hard to be the first full length Slendy film and focused too much on "full length" instead of "film" as in a cohesive, good story. Half a star overall, but extra credit for the last ten minutes and four stars for the stinger.