This week in the Deep Hurting Project: Slender Man. This movie has a strange backstory. First off, it's based on the Slender Man creepypasta. Not only was it made several years after people stopped giving a shit about it, but the trailer made it look a lot like the incident that ensured the character would lose a shitton of its popularity.
On 31 May 2014, two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin decided to lure one of their classmates to the woods and stabbed her 19 times as an apparent sacrifice to Slender Man. Fortunately, the girl who got stabbed died. Unfortunately, in 2018, Sony released the trailer for their Slender Man movie, and several scenes bore a resemblance to that incident. They had a lot of backlash against it, especially in the Milwaukee and Waukesha areas, where many theaters refused to show it. To try and exorcise the controversy (and also to make it hit a PG-13 rating, because fucking Christ is the PG-13 horror movie a big thing), they deleted those scenes from the movie. Unfortunately, not only did this not make those Wisconsin theaters back down, this turned what could have been a bland movie shockingly incomprehensible.
On 31 May 2014, two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin decided to lure one of their classmates to the woods and stabbed her 19 times as an apparent sacrifice to Slender Man. Fortunately, the girl who got stabbed died. Unfortunately, in 2018, Sony released the trailer for their Slender Man movie, and several scenes bore a resemblance to that incident. They had a lot of backlash against it, especially in the Milwaukee and Waukesha areas, where many theaters refused to show it. To try and exorcise the controversy (and also to make it hit a PG-13 rating, because fucking Christ is the PG-13 horror movie a big thing), they deleted those scenes from the movie. Unfortunately, not only did this not make those Wisconsin theaters back down, this turned what could have been a bland movie shockingly incomprehensible.
- This girl never sneezes because she's afraid she might be expelling demons that live inside her... dafuq? Seriously, a lot of the movie's writing simultaneously sounds like it was improvised on the spot, but also focusing on shit that I'm sure would be a bit too esoteric for a lot of teenage girls to know.
- 30 is the age of sophistication... being told to a 30-year-old guy who's sitting on his bed in his underwear next to his pillow-wife and typing up stupid things from a shitty movie.
- So, they're aware of a supernatural being who abducts children, leaves those he doesn't take permanently scarred, and that once you see him, you're fucked... and they're going to try and summon him? Even when I do crazy shit like snorting my mother's ashes, it's at least not going to be something so high-risk, low-reward as summoning someone who's
- This sounds llike Russian Malware shit? A bit of an understatement!
- Wow. It looks like the Se7en-looking shit from the trailers is making it into the movie at least.
- Aw, man, school trips to cemeteries? Why couldn't I go to that school?
- Oh, how cute, they're trying to bring their best friend back from the Upside Down by giving them old arts and crafts projects.
And it somehow works. - So, the token black girl is repeatedly told to keep her blindfold on because looking at the Slender Man causes people to die, go insane, or worse. So, what does she do during the second summoning ritual? Looks straight at him.
- So, one of the Slender Man's means of madness is creating the void from Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite?
- ... Please tell me they're not playing Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain" in this piece of shit.
- And now, a major symptom is really shitty and fast zooms that keep the person in the foreground the same, but somehow don't quite qualify as Vertigo shots?
- Wasn't there a token black girl in this movie? Maybe the scene of her stabbing herself from the trailer was one of the casualties from the controversy.
- They're surprised that the arts and crafts projects weren't enough for the Slender Man? Gee, it's almost like trying to summon a being who kills or maddens everyone who see him was a really fucking stupid idea.
- And the big twist is that one of them gets turned into a fucking tree? Seriously? They're ripping off Over the Fucking Garden Wall for their vision of the Slender Man? Seriously?
In a surprising note of synchronicity, next week's movie also had a controversy that had to result in a scene being deleted (mid-release, by the way), and while it's not as important as a main character dying, it's honestly really fucked up and kind of reprehensible in its implications. Next week, Show Dogs
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.