Development of the film began in May 2016, with Birke being hired to write the script and much of the cast signing on a year later. Filming took place in the state of Massachusetts in June and July 2017.
Released in the United States on August 10, 2018, the film was poorly received by critics and audiences but was a modest box office success, grossing $51.7 million against a budget between $10‒28 million. For her performance, Sinclair was nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress.
Plot
In the fictional small town of Winsford, Massachusetts, Katie Jensen, Hallie Knudsen, and their friends Chloe and Wren have a sleepover at Katie's house. They speculate that the group of boys they saw earlier were planning to summon Slender Man. Featured in urban legends spread throughout the Internet, Slender Man is a supernatural being who lures and abducts innocent children. The four finds a disturbing video that demonstrates how he can be reached.
The following week, on a class field trip, Katie notices a presence in the trees. Shortly after, she disappears without a trace. The police arrive but fail to find her.
Hallie, Chloe and Wren examine Katie's laptop for clues. They learn that Katie, who had been unhappily living with her alcoholic father, had become obsessed with the occult, specifically Slender Man sightings. She had contacted a person named Allison Riley regarding methods of reaching the character, who she hoped would provide an escape.
The trio contact Allison, who explains that Slender Man infects people's minds, eventually either driving them completely insane or kidnapping them. To retrieve Katie, they need to perform a ritual to "unveil themselves", which involves surrendering an item special to each of them.
Before the ritual, Wren, who had researched Slender Man mythology, instructs Hallie and Chloe to don blindfolds and avoid looking directly at Slender Man's face, lest they die or go mad. However, during the ritual, Chloe panics and flees, seeing the Slender Man up close. Sometime later, he enters Chloe's house and drives her mad.
Wren, suffering from frightening visions, researches further about the figure in the local library, where it attacks her. Hallie attempts to ignore the issue by spending the night with her boyfriend. Meanwhile, Hallie's sister Lizzie suffers a major panic attack and is hospitalized. Examining Lizzie's computer, Hallie discovers that Wren and Lizzie had attempted to contact Slender Man.
Heading to Wren's house to confront her, Hallie finds information that Wren gathered in her bedroom concerning Slender Man and his victims, one of whom was Allison Riley. Hallie sees Wren preparing to commit suicide out of terror and guilt, and dissuades her. Wren tearfully confesses that Lizzie approached her with interest in Slender Man. Wren accompanied Lizzie to the woods, where she offered him her teddy bear. Wren reveals their offerings were insufficient, as Slender Man will only rest once he has seized all of them physically. Suddenly, Slender Man shatters the glass window and kidnaps Wren, pulling her outside with his tentacles appearing in the shape of branches.
Hallie ventures into the woods. Encountering the entity, she pleads for him to take her instead. He obliges and ensnares her, both of them fusing together as a tree.
Lizzie awakens in the hospital screaming for her sister, but ultimately makes a successful recovery and reflects on what happened to the quartet.
In May 2016, news outlets reported that Sony Pictures had started developing Slender Man, a film based on the supernatural mythical character created by Eric Knudsen,[4] with the screenplay to be written by David Birke. Sony's Screen Gems was in talks with Mythology Entertainment, Madhouse Entertainment, and It Is No Dream Entertainment to produce and distribute the project.[5]
In January 2017, Sylvain White was announced as the director of the film and the producers would be Mythology's James Vanderbilt, and William Sherak, Madhouse's Robyn Meisinger, and No Dream's Sarah Snow.[6]Ramin Djawadi and Brandon Campbell composed the score for the film.[7]
Prior to the release, the producers shopped the film to other distributors following disagreements with the studio regarding the release and marketing strategy.[8] After the film was released, Bloody Disgusting reported that Screen Gems had required the producers to meet a PG-13 MPAA rating and that several scenes had been cut over fears of public backlash (including several scenes that had appeared in trailers), resulting in narrative and continuity issues in the final film.[9][10]
Casting
In May 2017, Lea van Acken, Julia Goldani Telles, Jaz Sinclair, Annalise Basso, Talitha Bateman, and Alex Fitzalan joined the cast.[11] In July 2017, Kevin Chapman was also added, to play an emotionally defeated, alcoholic father.[12]
On January 2, 2018, the first teaser poster was revealed, with a teaser trailer the following day.[14][15] Reactions were mixed, with some online publications describing the trailer as taking a "traditional, low-budget horror route".[16][17][18] Other publications noted the film's release coming four years after the Slender Man stabbing in Waukesha County, Wisconsin in 2014.[16][19][20][21] After the trailer's online debut, Bill Weier, the father of one of the children convicted in the stabbing, protested the film's production and release as "extremely distasteful" and advised local theaters to not screen the film.[22][23] A second trailer was released on July 26, 2018.
Slender Man grossed $30.6 million in the United States and Canada, and $21.2 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $51.7 million.[3]
In the United States and Canada, Slender Man was released alongside The Meg and BlacKkKlansman, and was projected to gross $9–12 million from 2,109 theaters in its opening weekend.[27] The film made $4.9 million on its first day, including $1 million from Thursday night previews,[2] and went on to debut to $11.3 million, finishing fourth at the box office.[28] It fell 56% to $5 million in its second weekend, finishing eighth.[29]
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, Slender Man holds an approval rating of 8% based on 80 reviews and an average rating of 3.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Slender Man might be thin, but he's positively robust compared to the flimsy assortment of scares generated by the would-be chiller that bears his name."[30] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 30 out of 100 based on 15 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[31] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "D−" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it an "awful" 38% positive score; social media monitor RelishMix noted that "the majority's feeling toward [the] film" was negative.[2]
David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a D, writing "a tasteless and inedibly undercooked serving of the Internet's stalest creepypasta, Slender Man aspires to be for the YouTube era what The Ring was to the last gasps of the VHS generation. But... there's one fundamental difference that sets the two movies apart: The Ring is good, and Slender Man is terrible."[32]
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