Review: Slender Man

Image courtesy of Sony Pictures.

At the risk of trafficking in bad puns, "Slender Man" is perilously thin. Based on a "creepypasta" internet meme, which is the modern web-based equivalent of telling ghost stories around the camp fire, the legend of the Slender Man - who was created by Eric Knudsen (also known as Victor Surge) - led to a horrific true crime incident in 2014 when some Wisconsin girls brutally stabbed - albeit not fatally - another girl as an offering to the mythical being.

This film, thankfully, veers away from anything relating to that awful case, but it's pretty dreadful all the same. In the picture, a group of four girls - inspired by a group of fellow male high school students - decide to summon the Slender Man on the internet by watching a video that is the online equivalent - although much less creepy - of "The Ring."

Shortly thereafter, the girls start being tormented by creepy visions and creaky sounds in their houses. When one of them goes missing, it is up to the other three - Hallie (Julia Goldani Telles), Chloe (Jaz Sinclair) and Wren (Joey King) - to figure out the mystery of the Slender Man and how to escape his grasp.

To director Sylvain White's credit, there is some haunting imagery of eerie wooded areas and desolate small town America. On the other hand, there are one too many jump scares - my least favorite cliched horror movie trope - and the characters are wooden. Hallie is the responsible teen with the younger sister, Chloe likes a guy in the girls' class, Katie (Annalise Basso) is the fragile one and Wren is the troublemaker. But we otherwise know too little about them to make us care much.

The Slender Man story could have made for a creepy horror film. But in the realm of viral demons haunting people, the picture is closer to the awful "Truth or Dare" from earlier this year than "The Ring," which was a far superior execution of the concept of summoning an evil being by bearing witness to a video. "Slender Man" is, ultimately - at the risk of yet another bad pun - too slight.