Slender (I) (2016) User Reviews

A waste of money, time, and brain cells. I grew dumber with each passing minute watching this travesty. AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!

[manuelasaez · 2/10 · 6 April 2016]

This has to be a joke. I mean, who seriously thought the quality of this movie even resembles that of a real, honest-to-goodness film? There is absolutely nothing redeemable about this movie, and aside from some of the acting, it offers nothing new, unique or interesting to the Slenderman mythos, or even the found-footage sub-genre as a whole. The cast is narcissistic and unlikable (3/4th's of the film is spend "getting to know" these jerks), and once things start to get mildly interesting, it falls flat like a full and soiled diaper. Once the credits started to roll, I wondered what I was doing wasting my time on this crap. From now on, if a movie does not have at least 10 reviews, I am not even going to bother watching it. It's bad enough that these untalented people released this festival of feces onto the world, but I'll be damned if I support it with my hard earned money.

To the people responsible; if you don't have the budget, the talent or the skill, just stop. You are only making yourselves look bad, and are making a mockery of the once respect craft known as film-making. Leave film-making to people who actually understand what it takes to make a compelling movie, as you have proved to lack any ability to do so. I will be looking for your names in any future film in order to avoid it like it is contagious. Simply tragic. F-

Huge Letdown

[shmarie · 3/10 · 2 October 2016]

Extreme let down of a film. I really liked the movie Always Watching (that was my first foray into the Slenderman character) and when I saw this pop up on iTunes New and Noteworthy section of horror movies I got giddy. The trailer looked good but I was not impressed. Whoever made the trailer should get all the income generated from viewers who download this thing. There are brief hints at Slenderman, but the movie is mostly low-budget filler (as earlier reported by other reviewers) and honestly, my favorite part was the beginning because the old dude at the bar was really funny. However, although I gave it an extra star for that, it is NOT why I watched/bought this movie! The filmmakers should go for a different genre because horror isn't their forte. The other 2 stars are for decent acting and a few mild moments which I was interested.

Good, if you're watching at 2:00 in the morning.

[limejohn · 2/10 · 23 April 2016]

In my adventures in looking for some good movies, I came across "Slender", one of those fake documentary horror films that show a bunch of people making a documentary only to reveal to themselves a terrifying truth. Alright, I like what some people can do with that. But this, this movie was simply a video of a bunch of pricks only really focusing on this poor lady who lost her two sons. And that's just a summary of the film.

The movie starts with a video recorded on a train of a seemingly crazy woman talking about a monster with tentacles and no face taking her children. Wonder who the monster was... (SlenderMovieCover.jpeg) And then it goes to my favorite pricks ever, one of them wanting to make a film! So we meet our group, boring filler happens and finally 30 minutes in it starts acting like a documentary. We find crazy lady and they interview her, not happy enough they decide to invade her dead children's old room, surprised that it has stayed the same for 5 years(This is what parents do when a child goes missing, they hope the child will return and keep the room the same. It's very sad actually...) We then leave poor lady at her house for a god damn year. During this time, the director decides the documentary is about fear and what it does to people. For them to show the effects of fear, they decide to prank this woman who is still looking for her sons after 5 god damn years and in the directors words, "pull the rug out from under her feet." They do this by dressing one of them in a costume of this spooky monster to pop up and scare her at her kid's old school. In the basement. So basically, they're gonna give her a big ol' middle finger with a note saying "Your kids are dead, deal with it." This ends up having them discover that the monster is real! How, you ask? Well the poor lady arrives at the school, dies what can only be guessed to have been the most terrifying and painful moment she ever was able to experience, and they all die except for the director, who ends the film in a dark classroom saying "You're not real, you're not real."

Bootleg Slenderman. Ceramic Wasps?

[ThomasBleedPHD · 1/10 · 15 May 2017]

Have you ever wondered what an Asylum Films version of Slenderman would look like? Why? Why did you will this into reality by thinking about it? Ugh, whatever.

There have been a couple of Slenderman movies over the past couple of years, and pretty much all of them are bad. I can't speak to the quality of the HBO documentary, but I don't necessarily count that one anyway.

Although Slenderman is a beloved part of internet folklore, he's a copyrighted character. Somebody owns him and has exclusive rights to use the character. That means if you don't have his permission to make a Slenderman movie, you won't make a Slenderman movie. Unless of course, you avoid ever using the character's actual name or likeness, play with him just enough to make him recognizable but never actually show him, and just call him a "Slender Being" instead of his actual name.

That's how this movie came to be. A zero-budget, zero-talent, zero- originality schlockfest that rips off the notability and likeness of Slenderman but stops just short of anything that can get them sued, this is a Z-movie bootleg.

Even if you can forgive the movie for being a tasteless ripoff (I can forgive "Due Date" for being a blatant ripoff of "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" because it's entertaining) you'll find yourself being slowly tortured by the bad editing, endless filler, scenes that never pay off, scenes that have nothing to do with the rest of the movie, scenes of people yammering about nothing, and massive flaws that go directly against the most basic rules of filmmaking. This movie is a disaster, like bad poetry in motion.

If I held this movie to normal standards, I'd have to call it one of the worst films ever made. However, I can't even count this as a real film. Generally, "indie" films are excluded from my list of the very worst (because there's so, so many bad ones) unless they can hit that sweet spot where they're coherent enough to count as a real movie, but bad enough to be garbage.

This is not coherent enough to be a "real" film. This movie is a mess. This is a bootleg Slenderman film, and it isn't even a good bootleg. Avoid it like you'd avoid the real Slenderman.

Another failed attempt to take advantage of a well known property.

[drunyan2007 · 1/10 · 14 May 2016]

"Slender" features a group of friends who decide they want to make their own documentary, after seeing a woman rant on a train about a tall man with no face they find their story. I don't know where to start on this film, i'll start with a positive and that is the acting is actually really solid. Everyone does a good job making their character believable. As far as positives go that is all I can say. The characters are ass holes with next to no likable traits. The story is a mess, it jumps all over the place from as far as 1 year in the future and as far as 5 years in the past. It makes the story confusing and sometimes causes the story to straight up go off the rails. In a scene with the lead detective on the missing kids case they tell you his partner died in a car crash then immediately show you patrol footage that straight up shows him get out of his car and get killed (off screen of course). Maybe these are the worst detectives in the world so maybe we shouldn't judge. Slender Man NEVER shows up in this movie, he is talked about and teased but he doesn't show up not even for a second of this film. Each scene feels like filler that unfortunately goes no where. Its 1 hour and 22 minutes that you could spend doing a million better things than watching this dumpster fire of a movie. I can't recommend this movie to anyone, avoid it at all costs. Maybe one day we will get a good movie based on Slender Man but this isn't that film.

What if we made a Slender Man movie where Slender Man never shows up?

[amysteriofan · 1/10 · 10 May 2016]

No, seriously, Slender Man LITERALLY never shows up in the entire film. At all. If you make it through the whole movie without almost falling asleep, good on you. What a joke. Also I get that it's supposed to be found footage, but it gets very annoying when they keep switching to the phone camera footage filmed vertically. I don't want to keep talking about this stupid movie, but it needs to be put out there that this film is a straight up bait a switch. A few poor souls out there will watch because they like the character, and I feel sorry knowing how let down they will be. Because again, besides a character who dresses up as him, Slender Man himself shows up zero times in this movie. I guess it is implied that he is there a few times, but even if he is best when in the background, you should at least get to see him once or twice. Or, you know, at all. Anything else? Well, there's a boring bit in the middle that's interviewing some boring characters that lasts forever with nothing happening. It is SO dull it is honestly impressive, even the supposed climax. This movie is false advertising and I want my 10 bucks back.

As Bad As Everyone Says It Is

[knightox · 1/10 · 24 March 2019]

Sometimes movies suffer a bad rap from too many negative reviews. "Slender" DESERVES ALL of the horrible things you could possibly say about an absolutely worthless film. There is no "Slender Man" actually in it! From the plot, to the acting and the filming, all of it will actually rot your brain. The ending will infuriate you!

Bad Horror Movie For 10 year olds scared of their own shadow.

[Stoliorange100 · 1/10 · 26 July 2018]

I can't believe this is what passes for horror nowadays. At least the tag line sounds about right. "Once you see this you can't unsee this"

Get it together, Utah!

[justin-w-nadolski · 2/10 · 28 January 2019]

After all the Sundance events and other independent films coming out of the state, this is a disappointing addition for the pile. I enjoyed the nostalgia of many familiar venues from when I resided in Utah for 10 years. That was about it. Snoozer, but kudos for getting a piece of my attention. So glad an actual Slender Man came out two years later, and definitely a worthy endeavor.

NO FACE. NO FACE. NO FACE.

[nogodnomasters · 1/10 · 22 April 2018]

This is a found footage film about Slender Man meant to be a documentary on two missing children, supposedly abducted. It takes 8 minutes before the group decide what they want to film poorly. They opt for a fictional anorexic figure which they apparently have never witnessed. Milli (Mili Parks) is the mother of said children and they PLOT SPOILER decide to surprise her with a fake Slender Man they created as a joke,

Okay, I am not going to tell you how that works out, but like most found footage junk, you don't get to see the title character. There was nothing interesting about the film.

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity. For those of us who have seen the real slender man, he normally appears at dawn or dusk when the shadows are long, almost never in bright daylight or at night. He comes out from the right side, not left like you see with the police footage. He is all black, no white markings. Slender, but not abnormally tall. He can travel alone, in numbers or with a wolf-like creature. And BTW you don't have to believe in him to see him

I liked it but I like the games.

[jacobericson · 8/10 · 6 May 2016]

I personally liked this movie a lot I, however, am also a big fan of the games and psychological thriller movies and games in general. I also like indie type movies and such so in this instance my stance is quite biased: however, this movie is better than people give it credit for. It felt and looked very realist for the most part aside from the few errors like glitches that shouldn't have happened in the beginning and it wasn't as realist as it could have been in the end but aside from that it was pretty decent. The ending was not my favorite. I will admit and this is the spoiler alert but the ending sucked compared to what they could have done, but as it was a lower budget movie it makes sense to end it the way thy did as they were likely very low on funds at that point and had to cut the movie short and deal with what they had. Still though i found this movie very enjoyable and would recommend it to anyone who wants a little bit of an adrenaline rush late at night, which just so happens to be when I watched it and when I recommend you watch it to.

probably not

[kay_rock · 2/10 · 1 July 2020]

This is "found footage" only if all cell phones ceased to exist and the entire thing was filmed by a guy with Parkinson's who stole an old, broken betamax camera from his grandpa's attic. The video and sound quality are so bad they're distracting. It doesn't lend an air of realism to it... in fact it pulls you out of it as you struggle to figure out what you're seeing and hearing and you wonder why on earth the quality is so bad.

2 stars because they set out to make a movie and get it distributed, and by-gum they did it. Other than that, not really worth watching.

A Sub-Par Slender Man Film

[jacobstanley-64349 · 5/10 · 4 August 2020]

While the movie itself couldn't use the likeness or even the actual look of the iconic creepypasta, the film itself was alright, nothing too good and somewhat breaking the rules of it's own idea being that of found footage, meaning the film constantly uses stuff other than just the main characters cameras such as a screen capture of a call with the main characters around the middle of the film. It tends to feel very fan film esq, in which case I'd have said watch many of the others that are online. While the film itself is free on YouTube via Popcornflix. I still have to respect the creators for at least trying to build a form of mystery, however the main characters aren't likable all too much and honestly make me root for this tall faceless monster to kill them already. The characters interactions do feel somewhat genuine at times however it doesn't save the film from coming off as very midrange YouTube production and the lack of Slender Man overall does hurt the film. Overall 5/10, for what it did, it did okay, but it could've been so much more.

The case of the missing ghost

[Woodyanders · 2/10 · 24 December 2019]

Two friends who are looking for an ideal subject to make a documentary about decide to investigate the story of a distraught woman who claims her two children were abducted by a mysterious slender man in a suit. Naturally, they wind up in considerable jeopardy.

Director/co-writer Joel Petrie crucially fails to generate any essential tension or creepy atmosphere. Moreover, there's way too much time spent with the annoying and insipid characters talking up an agonizingly tedious storm, the mostly uneventful narrative plods along at a painfully sluggish pace before finally limping towards a lame drawn-out climax full of screaming and running, but alas all the potentially good and exciting stuff happens offscreen, and, worst of all, the titular skinny ghost guy never makes a fleeting appearance at any given moment. In addition, the crude cinematography in particular is an ugly eyesore throughout, with dodgy sound, lots of wobbly hand-held camerawork, occasional blurry focus issues, and many instances of poor framing that appear to have been shot on someone's portable smartphone. The cast do their best with the lackluster material and at least everyone apparently dies at the end. A real clunker.

Hot garbage

[fabianvillela · 1/10 · 11 January 2020]

Why just why... let me begin this movie is 🐕💩 from start to finish this fails at capturing your attention. All scares were done poorly and it's such a shame seeing there is more than 3 games based around slendy. Shame on you for making this

It's fine to have on in the background while you fiddle with your phone.

[TwistedCyberChik · 4/10 · 1 April 2022]

Watch the first minute for context then skip about 15 minutes and you'll have a better time. The ending could have easily been improved but oh well. The acting was fine, believable even. I don't think it deserves a score of 1, I've definitely seen worse films. 3.5 stars is about fair.

An indie film with the odds stacked against it.

[psychofox-88511 · 3/10 · 12 September 2022]

I'll start off by pointing out that Slender had some major post-production hurdles to jump. Due to ownership rights of the Slenderman character, the film-makers apparently had to edit out a lot of references to, and on-screen representations of the familiar character. I write this review with that in mind.

In all honesty, I think the film-makers had some good approaches and nice ideas. There are several scenes where the actors are clearly off-script and just ad-libing their lines and actions. These scenes really stand out as believable and memorable, and hark back to the "guerilla filming" approach of The Blair Witch Project.

Sadly, and unlike The Blair Witch Project, this film has a script that is both badly thought-out, and seems to be too rigidly adhered to for the style of film the creators seemed to be trying to make.

There are frequent moments where its hard to believe that any single person - let alone and entire film crew - could go along with what they have planned. The final section, in particular, sees one character behave like an utter sociopath, and the surrounding characters initially object before quickly deciding to join in, despite all of their moral and logical objections, with no real reason for doing so.

There are several scenes where Slender Man was clearly pictures or mentioned, but was then edited out. To be fair. These edits are presented as visual or audio glitches which fit in with the story and myhtis of the character, and are largely well-handled. I've watched this film twice and it was only after reading about the legal issues before my second viewing that I could spit that these edits were censoring things out. Some of these scenes suggest there were subtle hints of Slenderman in the background but they could just have easily been cheap jumo-scares in some scenes. Given the editing and censorship, it's hard to tell what these scenes would have looked like if presented as originally intended.

Overall though, and even making allowance for the troubled post-production, Slender just doesn't hit the marks it aims for.

Far too much of the film is taken up with letting us get to know the main characters, with very little left for plot profession. The horror aspect, which is what a film like this is really all about, only really comes into play in the final 15-20 minutes and, even then, is largely a montage of angsty characters fretting over where other characters have gone.

The characters themselves are hard to pin down. In some scenes they seem genuine and relatable, but in others act as cheap movie clichés which are utterly unbelievable.

It's a shame. I thing the creators has good intentions for this film and approached some things in novel and effective ways. But, ultimately, these few imaginative sparks were obscured my poor writing and mediocre execution. Forced censorship of any direct Slender Man references wasn't so much the nail in the coffin as patting down the earth on the grave.

I would be interested to see what the film-makers do in future - there's potential there - but I don't think Slender demonstrates that potential anywhere clearly enough.