What would it be like if you REALLY had to worry about games you open on your phone, Saying, “Slender Man, Slender Man, Slender Man,” 3 times and waiting to see him. What if you watched the dreaded video like in The Ring and had to wait to see what happened!? We looked this weekend, at movies involving urban legends that conjure some sort of spirit, folklore and maniacal killer into existence; discovering some truth behind The Slender Man in the process.
We started with 47 Hours to Live. This movie was released in 2019, rated TV-MA and was rated a 4.9 on IMDB. We watched this on Amazon Prime.
It is set in a Texas town with continuous Texas storms. (I lived in Houston for about 5 years and we never had storms like this….. EVER!) It involves 2 odd girls who become friends and play the internet game, 47 Hours to Live. It was filmed similar to The Ring. Girls at a party, they talk about the legend, play the game on their phone, they pass the phone back and forth with a timer set on the phone and whoever it takes a picture of after quoting “To the darkness I am bound,” will have 47 hours to live.
The movie was predictable, there was no creep factor, no relatable characters and I dont care to to attempt to find out the believability. Neither of us plan to play any of the urban legend games and see what happens. Tracey told Richard on the podcast that we all know these things are bullshit, and 99.9% of your brain tells you so, but the .1% overwhelms enough that you really don’t plan to stand in front of our mirror quoting “Bloody Mary” to find out!
We ended up rating this movie a 1.5 and think IMDB gave it way more credit than it needed. Would we watch it again? NOPE!
Our next movie was called Smiley.
Smiley was released in 2012 and is rated R. It was rated a 3.4 on IMDB. The film is directed by Michael Gallagher and we watched it on YouTube.
The movie is an urban legend of a demented serial killer who has a carved ‘smiley’ on his face. It revolves around a mentally fragile teenager who has to figure out if she is going insane or is the next victim.
Legend says if you are video- chatting with someone and type in “I did it for the lulz” three times you will see ‘Smiley’ appear behind them and murder them. The movie mainly takes place at apartments with the students on their computers or on the college campus. There was no creep factor, at all. The ONLY redeeming thing is this movie was the professor. This character was believable and funny and made the movie watchable. The acting was tolerable but there were discrepancies in scenes that drove us nuts! There is a scene where a girl hangs out a window and drops her phone with it smashing on the ground below. In the next scene she uses the same cell phone. Really? Were we not suppose to notice this? The ending is confusing and with no spoilers on here we have to kind of leave it here. We did however, rate this higher than IMDBs 3.4 and gave it a solid 5.2.
Moving into better films we next viewed Slender man.
Slender man
Slender Man is based on a real urban legend, yet also born from some truth. The movie was released in 2018 and is rated PG-13. It is directed by Sylvain White and was rated 3.2 on IMDB. We rented it using the Redbox app.
The movie revolves around 4 friends who, while bored one night watch the video of The Slender Man. In the video you are told when the bell tolls once you will hear him, the second toll you will see him and the third toll you will feel him.
One by one the girls go missing and the remaining have to try to figure out how to stop the curse before it is too late. The movie has really decent acting and had some good creepy elements. The dark shadows that grow on the walls and the faceless evil killer made it creepy. There were a few jump scares that actually worked. Now, Richard NEVER responds to a jump scare! EVER! Tracey, however is easily caught by them and Slender Man did not disappoint.
Now, one of our biggest gripes in a horror movie which we addressed in this podcast is, WHY DO ACTORS IN HORROR MOVIES ALWAYS WALK THROUGH THE HOUSE WITH ALL THE LIGHTS OFF??????!!!! WHY? The power is not off and yet no-one is smart enough to turn a light on. I never walk through my house in the dark. I have motion activated nightlights in all my bathrooms! I don’t know a real human person that doesn’t turn a light on when scared and going to check out a noise! Besides this fact, the movie was okay. The first half sets the scene for a good movie. The second half is like a drug trip. If we smoked weed or dropped acid we could have kept up, but sober it got a little hokie with face shakes, distorting figures, flashing scenes back and forth, people morphing into trees….. come on. If it could have continued normal and not turned in to something you needed to be high to understand it could have hung with the big dogs of urban legend movies. It failed.
Richard gave the movie a 5.0 and Tracey didnt rate it saying simply, “the first half was good the second 1/2 sucked!”
The movie is based on and actual story (link below)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42450641
The Real Story Behind Slender Man:
In 2014, in Waukesha, Wisconsin, 3 friends Anissa Weier, Morgan Geyser and Payton Leutner had a spend the night party. After the party Weier and Geyser lured Leutner to the woods and stabbed her 19 times to appease The Slender Man. They state they did it so he didn’t hurt their families. Leutner miraculously survived and crawled to a road where she was discovered by a biker. She recovered from her wounds and is alive. Geyser and Weier are both serving time. Geyser was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was sentenced to 40 years in a mental institution. Weier was diagnosed with a mental defect and sentenced to 25 years in a mental institution. To us, the craziest part of the whole story was that it is based on a hoax. We found through research that Slender Man actually started from an internet challenge. A man posted pictures he photoshopped with a tall slender figure standing behind children and he challenged others to photoshop pictures and send them in for creep factor. This picture consumed the internet and the legend was born.
Drum roll please….. our last movie was actually a winner!!! We don’t say that often but this one was pretty good. We watched The Empty Man.
We watched The Empty Man after renting at the Redbox Kiosk (I had a coupon for the kiosk.) It was released in 2020 and is brand new. Rated R it was directed by David Prior and is based on the graphic novel, BOOM!
IMDB rated this movie a 5.6.
The film opens in a foreign country and is gorgeous!! The scenery is so amazingly breathtaking, we were actually surprised. For anyone who knows me, they know I love Mongolian metal music, especially by The Hu. The first music that was played is Mongolian. It isn’t metal but it is haunting and pulled me in from the opening scene. This movie jumps directly into it. There is no real character build up, it is just WHAM, you are in it; and it works! The story involves an urban legend that if you find a glass bottle on a bridge, you blow into it repeat, “The empty man, the empty man, the empty man” clearing your mind of anything but him and he will appear to you. The movie manages to incorporate GREAT acting, superb writing and things you actually haven’t seen in horror before. We were so pleasantly surprised at some of the original and unique ideas this film offered. It is 2 hours and 17 mins long. The thought process of uniqueness, continued for about 2 hours……. the last 17 minutes showed up and it all went to hell! It got so confusing and trippy. We rated the movie over all a 7 and Richard gave it a 3 for the last 17 minutes. It is worth watching and even worth spending the money to watch it now versus waiting until it comes to Prime or Netflix. Go see this one!!!!!
The link to the podcast is below if you want to listen to this one or any of our previous reviews!
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Richard and Tracey- The Reel Couple
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