"Where is my daughter? People don’t just disappear."
— Hallie's father
Slender Man is a film based on the character of the same name written by David Birke with input by Eric Knudsen and directed by Sylvain White.
The film is about a group of girls who are tormented by Slender Man (Javier Botet) after summoning him, and now must find a way to save their lives before he takes them.
The film was released on August 10th, 2018 by Screen Gems.
Previews: Trailer 1
. Trailer 2.
Slender Man contains examples of:
- All There in the Manual: A very strange example. Tom and Chloe's fates are left unclear in the film itself, but a trailer indicates both committed suicide due to having to deal with Slender Man. This is confirmed in the official script.
- And I Must Scream: A likely fate for those captured by Slender Man. In the end, Hallie is finally captured by Slender Man and is pulled against a tree, slowly being absorbed into it while fully conscious. The last sound heard from her after complete assimilation is achieved is her crying out for her sister, Lizzie.
- And Then John Was a Zombie: During one sequence while Wren is being terrorized in the library, Slender Man steals her face so she looks exactly like him. Luckily, it's only a hallucination.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Slender Man successfully captures and/or causes the deaths of the four girls who summoned him.
- The Blank: Slenderman, obviously. Wren also temporarily gets her face stolen while she's being terrorized by him.
- Blood from the Mouth: One scene depicts a girl walking out of the woods towards the police, blood dripping from her mouth.
- Botanical Abomination: Slender Man (in the film at least) is a walking, humanoid tree. He also has power over tree branches and the sounds of tree branches snapping and contorting accompanies him whenever he moves.
- Bunny Ears Picture Prank: Katie gives Hallie bunny ears when they take a selfie together in the begining of the movie.
- Captain Obvious: The characters go to a website to watch a video of Slender Man and feel the need to call it a "website video".
- Cat Scare: Hallie and Lizzie hear someone enter their house and come up the stairs, and are terrified, believing it to be Slender Man. It turns out to be Katie's father, but since he's drunk, grieving and acting threateningly, he's not much better.
- Dangerous Windows: Wren meets her end when she is snatched from behind by a gigantic tree branch from the window, dragging her screaming into the night while Hallie watches.
- Driven to Suicide: In the trailer we see a girl stab herself with a knife in the middle of a class, splattering another girl in her blood and a boy walk off of a roof in broad daylight. It is safe to assume that the Slender Man is influencing these events in some form due to the fact that the girl is clearly hesitant to go through with the act, but does so anyways.
- Easily Forgiven: Wren tricks Hallie's younger sister Lizzy into performing the Slender Man ritual to save her own skin, resulting in Lizzy becoming comatose. While Hallie is rightfully furious when she finds out it only takes her one pretty harmless confrontation with Wren to decide it's water under the bridge.
- Eye Scream: There's a scene where the class is dissecting eyeballs, complete with close up.
- Also, while it seems to be thought that Chloe probably commited suicide after the film ended, people who want to believe she survived have to deal with fact that while a
Shrug of God confirms this, she did so by cutting out her eyes.
- Also, while it seems to be thought that Chloe probably commited suicide after the film ended, people who want to believe she survived have to deal with fact that while a
- Electromagnetic Ghosts: Slender Man is thought to be one by Wren, due to him manifesting himself from an online video, streaming himself closing in on his targets using phone apps, and is ultimately spreading his influence through images and videos of him sent online in general.
- Eternal Recurrence: The Slender Man has abducted many kids over the years (implied to be for centuries, if Hallie's research of similar phenomena is any indication), and will continue to do so.
- Excuse Plot: Slender Man is stalking, psychologically tormenting and killing a bunch of teenagers because they summoned him on a whim. Go!
- Expy: Slender Man is far too similar to other main — more iconic — horror villains, more specifically; Samara Morgan, Freddy Krueger and Pennywise.
- Face Death with Dignity: Subverted. It looks like Hallie is going to sacrifice herself for the sake of her sister, however, when Slender Man takes her up on this, she runs away screaming. Not that it does her any good.
- Facial Horror: A giant mass of tentacles burst out of one of the protagonist's mouth and eyes.
- The Ghost: Aleey Kat 93 only appears as messages on a computer screen, and is never seen in person.
- Gory Discretion Shot: We only see the girl getting splattered with blood after the "Driven to Suicide" moment above.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Hallie concludes that giving herself up to Slender Man is the only way to save her sister from the same fate. It must have worked, as Lizzie gives the ending narration to the movie.
- Although it’s a bit of a subversion as while she intended to sacrifice herself, when Slender Man is actually about to take her, she freaks out and tries to run for her life, not that it does her any good. She certainly does not Face Death with Dignity.
- Human Disguise: The film answers the question "Why would an evil tree being wear a suit?" in a very clever way; Slender Man has folds of bark and leaves on his chest that appear to be a shirt and tie at a quick glance.
- Invincible Villain: There is nothing the girls can do to stop Slender Man once he has been summoned. He is shown to have been capturing people for centuries, and is free to continue doing so.
- Irony:
- The boys plan to summon the Slender Man, and the girls decide to do the same. Later, the girls overhear the boys chicken out.
- On two different occasions, Slender Man utilizes a phone app called Face Time to haunt the main characters.
- Informed Ability: One of the girls appears to be quite bitter about her friend being a trophy winning track team star. The audience never gets shown her running track and her actual running when she flees Slender Man is...not trophy worthy.
- Jump Scare: Towards the end of the first trailer, Slender Man pops up in front of a girl who's hiding from him behind a tree.
- There's also one on the DVD menu if you wait long enough.
- Kindhearted Simpleton: Chloe is this as while she did bring her death onto herself, she is still the sweetest person in this movie (next to Lizzie). Her childhood about her father is quite heartbreaking compared to the rest of her friends. Whatever happened to her, even if she bought it on herself, it was probably awful. Thankfully, many people who actually prefer this ending think she's still alive (albeit without any eyes).
- Laser-Guided Karma: Wren tries to make Lizzy into a Sacrificial Lamb to save herself from Slender Man. While Lizzy is seemingly accepted by tthe Slender Man as a replacement sacrifice, not long after he shows up to Wren's house and takes her anyway.
- Missing Child: Katie's dad broke into Hallie's house to find her daughter and blames Hallie for her disappearances. Later, Hallie's parents call the police and tells Katie's dad to stay away from their daughters. After being put in the police car, Katie's dad breaks into tears.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Slender Man makes no appearances for the vast majority of the teaser trailer, and only appears for a few seconds at the very end.
- One-Winged Angel: Slender Man transforms into a giant spider during the climax.
- Shout-Out: One of the last scenes in the 2nd trailer is a direct homage to a scene in The Ring Two.
- Hallie’s last name is Knudsen, after the creator of the original Slender Man post on Something Awful, Eric Knudsen.
- Spider Limbs: Slender Man's tentacles turn into rigid spider limbs when chasing Hallie.
- Summoning Ritual: The plot of the movie begins when the main characters hear that Tom and his friends are attempting to summon Slender Man at their own sleepover and decide that it'd be fun for them to try too. It was as easy as loading up a video online and just watching it, apparently.
- Too Dumb to Live: Chloe, who was told several times not to remove her blindfold and gaze upon Slender Man for it can lead to death, madness, or worse, becomes startled when the girls' second summoning ritual begins to work and immediately removes her blindfold to investigate. She is almost immediately driven to suicidal lunacy afterwards.
- Trailers Always Lie: Nowhere in the film does a boy walk off a building or a girl stab herself in class. Nor is there a scene with a bloodied-up girl walking out of the forest holding...something?
- Trailers Always Spoil: Chloe's death would be a case of this, but the scene was ultimately removed from the theatrical cut.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Due to the cut scenes from the film, the exact fates of Chloe and Tom remain undisclosed from the film proper. While the removed scene of Chloe committing suicide out of madness, along with the fact that Lizzie groups Chloe up along with her dead friends/sister, can give an explanation to those willing to accept that it happened off screen, Tom's fate is never seen or even mentioned by anyone but looking at the trailer and a VFX Breakdown from Temprimental Films, one can surmise that the Slender Man coerced him into committing suicide by jumping off the roof of the school.
#CanYouSeeHim
