Horror fans know Creepypasta, scary stories that are passed around on online forums along with videos and photos. These stories are absolutely hair-raising and even people who don’t like watching scary movies are likely to feel a shiver down their spine just looking at some of the images.
While it makes sense that filmmakers would want to incorporate some of these stories into movies, it’s not the best idea that the 2018 film Slender man proven. There’s one main reason why these stories don’t work in film form and why they should stay online where they belong.
The main reason why Creepypasta tweaks don’t work? Translating these online stories into movies destroys them and something special and unique is lost. Creepypasta stories are told like campfire tales and urban legends and they feel more terrifying because readers can use their own imagination to fill in the blanks. When a Creepypasta story becomes a movie, it’s just not that scary, and all too often the resulting movie is boring and nothing like the original story.
-Cropped.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=740&dpr=1.5)
There are many video games based on Creepypasta stories and the way people started sharing these stories on the internet is certainly interesting. According to Turbo Future, people started using the word “copypasta” because they “copied” these stories on various websites. Creepypastas have text, videos and photos, and it seems that the 4chan /x/ board is where people first posted these kinds of scary stories.
The Creepypasta Slender Man was made into a movie in 2018, which is one of the worst teen horror movies. Eric Knudsen created him and posted a story about him on the SomethingAwful forum. He has no face, which is his most defining characteristic. This led to a real tragedy, according to Tech Crunchwhich is one reason why many people felt uncomfortable with this film adaptation.
In the film, four best friends Katie (Annalise Basso), Chleo (Jaz Sinclair), Hallie (Julia Goldani Telles) and Wren (Joey King) are bored in their small town in Massachusetts with nothing to do. They decide to see if they can make the Slender Man appear. While just wanting to have some fun, Katie goes missing and soon the others realize that this legend is real and they won’t be able to escape.
Although the film grossed more than $50 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo, there isn’t much going on. Slender man proves the problem with turning Creepypasta stories into movies: the stories don’t feel scary and become generic. In the 2018 film, this figure also becomes one of the worst horror movie monsters, as of course he looks as he should, but there is nothing about him that grabs the audience. He also doesn’t do much except show up, take people and kill. That may sound horrifying, but it doesn’t give the film anything to work with. The characters spend the entire movie walking around outside at night looking silly, but that doesn’t make for a great viewing experience.
Slender man is also not a horror movie with strong lead characters, nor are there great horror movie supporting characters. Everyone is boring and generic and could be put in any scary movie. There are tons of teen horror characters who hate where they live and want more excitement in their lives, so this isn’t that interesting because it’s been done so many times before. The movie is plotted as horror fans would expect: the girls want to see the Slender Man, they become scared of what they’ve discovered, and they spend the rest of the game time trying to escape him knowing they’re powerless.
It is possible to argue that the reason why Slender Man works as a Creepypasta story is his appearance. He is thin, has no face and looks more like a shadow than a real figure. This image looks great online and seems to lend itself naturally to an internet forum where people can let their imaginations run wild and imagine what it would be like to see Slender Man IRL. The whole movie is also very dark, which gets tiresome after a while.
Not every Creepypasta story will make a great horror movie. These stories are meant to be legends passed down, almost as if people are sitting around a smoky campfire trying to keep warm in the chilly evening air. These stories feel scary because it almost seems like they could be true, even though the readers know better. With the Slender man film, that feeling is completely lost in the translation, and it would therefore be better to leave other stories alone.
0 Comments