Slender Man Movie (2018): Ending Explained + Meaning Of The Monster
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Slender Man Movie (2018): Ending Explained + Meaning Of The Monster by Deffinition
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The creepy pasta horror meme: Slender Man has slowly risen in stature over the last decade. After starring in fan fiction, documentaries, games and more, the monster finally debuts on the silver screen in the film: Slender Man.
Throughout this video I will be discussing the movie’s plot as well as what I took from the ending of the film. There will be heavy spoilers so it may be worth skipping this video for now if you want to go into Slender Man unspoiled.
With that out the way I’m Deffinition and I ruin the movie so you don’t have to!
Slender Man Plot Synopsis
The film centres around four friends dealing with the consequences of summoning The Slender Man. After one of the four, Katie, goes missing, the other three discover that the girl had been fascinated by the mysterious monster and decide to attempt to make contact with it in the hopes of getting her back.
One of the girls Wren warns the two not to open their eyes when making contact with the Slender Man, as seeing it will result in death or madness.
However, during the summoning Chloe panics and opens her eyes thus viewing the monster. This causes the Slender Man to take her, to where we never find out but one could assume it is the dark dimension that the Slender Man comes from and uses to teleport with.
The surviving girls are haunted and stalked by The Slender Man and after Haillie’s sister and Wren attempts to recontact it they get put into further danger.
Haillie realises that the Slender Man wants to take her sister after she goes into a panic attack and must be hospitalised. Haillie, desperate to save her sister from the clutches of The Slender Man offers up a trade of herself in her siblings place. The Slender Man accepts this deal and takes Haillie instead of her sister.
In the final scene we see that Hallie’s sister is able to leave the hospital and reflects on the situation that resulted in the death of her sister and her friends.
The Real Life Slender Man
The symbolism of this ties directly into the real life Slender Man attack that happened in 2014. This involved two girls attempting to murder their friend in an attempt to appease the Slender Man. Both girls were sentenced to an institution and diagnosed with severe mental illness.
Other similarities to the real life case are that Katie researched the character must in the same way that the two attackers did and Hallies sister had to deal with the consequences of what happens when trying to appease him.
Personally I would have liked more ambiguity around the monster in the movie so that we could have drawn the conclusion that one of the girls was causing the disappearances. This would’ve tied into the real life events that happened and also allow the audience to struggle over the fact that the girls may have imagined the events due to psychosis and the willingness to believe in the entity much in the same way that people convince themselves of other paranormal happenings.
I also don’t believe that Slender Man actually exists and that he is in fact a figment of their imaginations. The girls are the only characters that are able to see The Slender Man and even when one is being strangled by the entity, we can see that there is actually nothing there and the attack is self inflicted.
Throughout the film several of the characters are missing their eyes. To me this symbolises that the characters are blind to the mental illness within the girls as it does not manifest on the surface. Hallie’s sister has a panic attack which could be brought on by extreme anxiety and the dark dimension that the Slender Man comes from could symbolise the dark parts of our mind that cause depression.
The line ‘once you see him you can’t unsee him’ also has further implications. To me this implies that there is no cure for Slender Man much in the same way that there is no real cure for mental illness and the further the girls fall into their own minds the more they push each other apart.
This is a really interesting aspect of the film but sadly it decides not to go fully down this route and is a rather surface level horror film filled with jump scares and under developed characters. To me this is a missed opportunity as it could have explored mental illness, bullying and other elements that are often overlooked in mainstream media. This is a shame as there is a lot of Slender Man material that I enjoy such as the games and fan fiction and if properly utilised there is a lot that you can do with the creature.