Half in the Bag Episode 151: Slender Man

half in the bag mm-hmm okay mr. Plunkett will be there right away hey Mike we got to get over to mr. Plunkett so we can fix his VCR Jay we're not having a story this time because the movie we just saw didn't have one either hey everyone it's slender man the new film based on something someone made up on the internet for high school girls summoned the Slender Man to do something they summon him by watching the video on the internet from a message board from the dark web whoo it's the dark web because everything is dark and colored black it's the dark web that's where you find Slenderman in my opinion stick to creepypasta and yes I am talking about Olive Garden dead intent that aren't done boy Mike we should look into getting the air conditioning fixed here I'm sweating more than the producers of Slenderman when they saw this weekend's box office results wait there were results well we saw Slender Man we didn't see Mission Impossible freefall or whatever it's called we didn't see the Meg man versus we didn't see ant-man versus versus the ones that the new title I don't know we didn't see Deadpool - no but we saw Slender Man well we have to we should talk about because there's not a lot to talk about with the actual movie we'll give her a UH we'll give our opinions on the movie but there's a whole backstory behind why we chose to see this film and the troubles we had seen the film that's right Jay well you all know about our history with Slenderman we recently made a video called to brother media invent Slender Man spoilers we didn't we do not want to take credit for the Slenderman phenomenon we definitely don't want to take any credit for this movie no or or what happened in real life yes which is the Wisconsin connection to Slenderman as became a worldwide news after hearing this week for the first time from two girls their own voices about the night they allegedly lured their friend into the woods and repeatedly stabbed her police say leaving her to die last May they lured her to a wooded area where police say they stabbed her 19 times when investigators asked why they did it they both had the same answer Slender Man - 12 year old girls in Waukesha which is just outside of Milwaukee here yes and this is all documented in the HBO documentary beware the Slender Man right I think that's what's going to get ya the two girls named Morgan geyser and Anissa Weier I should remember their names because on the news so much they're stabbed their friend 19 times who miraculously survived luckily she lives I think things would be different with the release of this movie yes I don't even know if this movie would have happened if she'd actually died I think the one and coincidentally the lead girl in this movie kind of looks like Morgan geyser oh yeah the girl from another great horror film wish upon yes I forget her name her name isn't she was in the contouring when she was like 10 years old and now let's put her in these crappy horror movies she's working she's working working making that money she kind of looks like Morgan geyser who I believe was the the ringleader yes she was kind of crazy one she's the one if you see the documentary and they show like them interrogating her and she's just like completely emotionally distant from everything the other one seemed more like a follower yeah and then the the Morgan one was not the one who did the stabbing she convinced the other one and well Charles Manson II situation but anyway so that's what happened and Hollywood wisely chose to make a movie about Slender Man phenomenon not based on that story just obviously slenderman's been around for a long time now they're probably five six ten years too late I'm making the Slenderman movie it's like the Angry Birds movie that [ __ ] was popular a decade ago what do you do in making this now but the backstory is that they made the movie and then the studio started to get cold feet because I think it was the father of the girl that was stabbed or one of the girls involved with an incident I was saying hey this is incredibly tasteless to make a movie exploiting or sensationalizing this you know real tragic event even though the movie isn't about that actual event Slender Man is a film about a fictional horror character but it is not being shown in the Milwaukee area where that character inspired a notorious real-life crime there they're probably better not showing it because they would just have empty theatres anyway that's very true it's not like they weren't there skipping out on Star Wars or well that's that's the other thing is like leading up to the release this movie there's been hardly no publicity for it right it's respectable they're not too good they're not taking a financial hit it's a win-win for them there's what I'm trying to say it's a win-win for the theater chains mainly Marcus yeah Marcus theaters which which owns a lot of the theaters in Wisconsin they're not taking a financial hit and they don't look like dirtbags it for for playing this movie I think they kind of like said okay you know here's where it happened in Waukesha let's let's circle a 30-mile radius we don't play in these theaters because it is playing at a lot of Marcus theaters but one's way up north yeah or well West but not in the general vicinity of where this happened it's like oh you know I think this the save face by not doing that but they're they're not missing out on those 11 ticket sales well that's yeah we drove down to Kenosha Wisconsin to see this film that was the closest theatre playing it so we actually had to go out of our way to see it we put in more effort to see this movie than to see movies that we are actually interested in seeing but the other thing to note is that the studio started to get cold feet about the the violence in the film one they wanted to be pg-13 so kids could go see it but also they didn't they if you want kids to see this oh yeah absolutely and also they were concerned about it being disrespectful or exploitative of real-life violence that happened in association with Slenderman so they ripped all that [ __ ] out half the stuff in the trailer is not in the movie [Music] the boyfriend character disappeared the boyfriend character disappeared show his death in the trailer I yes he's about to he's like falling off a bridge or something and there's cut that out of the movie let's make a horror film and then cut out all the horror and then just release a partial film into theatres and not advertise it it's like why even bother if you're gonna hack the movie apart and then not advertise it don't even release the [ __ ] thing well there was a different story before the movie came out how the producers of the film they looked at their contract and it said they could bid to other distributors like oh maybe this should go on Amazon yeah yeah hey Sony we're gonna go like see if Amazon wants to buy this or Netflix you know and so it was it was Netflix said this is too bad even for us we made bright and we released mute and we released Cloverfield paradox and we released towel and Amazon will release anything so it was a game of Slenderman hot potato yeah and nobody wanted it so they're stuck with Sony music stopped when Sony caught the hot potato they said yeah we're not spending a dime and on TV ads we'll make a trailer and put on YouTube yeah and that's it that's all well the scariest thing in the movie was the sony logo at the beginning Sony's logo looks too nice you associated with like quality like electronics products I suppose and needs to look more like the Millcreek logo hey there you go piece of garbage logo looks like that looks like Slenderman should have been released directly to a 50 movie DVD pack yes the Mill Creek logo looks like wing-dings the Mill Creek logo looks like Microsoft clipart Sony needs to up their logo and by up I mean make a terrible one for their the quality enough for their pictures and so it's deceptive really it is soli that's a big company that's a Japanese company they make all sorts of look I got my stereo from the sony sony [Music] so we have a half movie dumped into theaters that nobody saw here's when we went to buy our tickets here's what the theater looked like yep it's all one color and that color means nobody's in there and then when we finally got in there I think there were three other people one of them was an elderly woman that I think just goes to every showing because she has nothing to do with her final days she thought it was a workout video you know we noticed that the terrible Rotten Tomatoes score we noticed the terrible ratings we noticed it's the lead girl from wish upon so we were hoping we got to give up on this dream that we'll ever see another hilarious mid budget horror film we tried with truth or dare yes guys this nothing will top wish upon and maybe the bye bye man the bye bye man was bad but nothing nothing contemporary yeah like wish upon wish upon is a masterpiece of comedy I urge you all to check it out let's get that trending on Amazon again cuz that's a great film but yeah it started the same girl from that so you like ooh you know it's like when you when you see that Cameron Cameron Mitchell film yeah it's got Cameron Mitchell in it we're guaranteed low production quality yeah no it's got this girl yeah so that that's the backstory there there's the Wisconsin connection and then when they showed the map of like missing children I saw Wisconsin I looked at real close Oh second but there was nothing it was like I think closer to Madison maybe there wasn't a pin in Waukesha I was looking for a little like a little Easter egg yeah where they referenced it yeah I don't blame them for not at all although they do kind of mention there's like a little monologue by the Maine females little sister at the end where it's supposed to be like I guess it supposed to be like to leave you trembling when you leave the theatre like Slenderman can show up anywhere and and he is it's sometimes it's not even what he does that's horrifying it's what he causes other people to do yeah this is pretty [ __ ] sickening yeah Jesus Christ well that brings up an interesting point I mean it was it was a fine move for Marcus and I think other theater companies like AMC decided not to play it and in the radius yeah because what happened you know awful those little girls got delusional or crazy or tricked into trying to murder their friend terrible terrible story but you know it was a real-life event and and it's kind of weird because Slenderman is a fictional Internet character so then you have that where it's like younger people are influenced by it and so you don't want to like like it said in the movie yeah start this kind of infection where Sulu and thinking of movies real when we were little we watched Nightmare on Elm Street you know and stuff like that Jason [Music] but you know it's not real this is kind of bordering on reality because young there is that real horror story connected yeah we're young kids read it's like an urban legend almost they read it on the internet and they think it could be real but they're not sure so you're impressed there impressionable yeah but then you know like but it's like what what is the off limits for making a movie about something you make movies about Vietnam War yeah lots of people died in the Vietnam War were affected by it 9/11 you know stuff like that there's movies made about all sorts of there's a Charles Manson movie coming off I was sure Quinton turns you know so like they're not gonna play that in California yeah so it's like it's it's an ethical debate but it wasn't a movie about Morgan geyser and Anissa Weier no it wasn't a true life story that would have been more interesting to segue into the film yeah well they if they made like a dramatic film that did it tastefully but this is just like a cheapo oh yeah it's a movie that they're trying to make a quick buck on yes from an unknown I think that property I think that's the real like the the real angle here is that a war movie has like a message you know to the born on the 4th of July or something you're not glorifying Vietnam right you're just telling the story and you're trying to have an emotional impact they are basically like con artists what's popular let's grab this let's make a buck and move out of town yeah so and I think people see through that which it well it's funny because we looked up the screenwriter after the fact because this movie is all teenagers and the dialogue is [ __ ] terrible and so we looked up the screenwriter and he the guy who is writing realistic teen dialogue here's this picture this is who they relied on but we looked him up and he's done aside from he wrote L the Paul Verhoeven movie from a couple years ago that was critically acclaimed would aside from that it's nothing but direct-to-video garbage including and some people might not remember this or know about this but in the early 2000s there was like a glut of directed video movies based on real-life serial killers and this guy that wrote this movie wrote he wrote the Dahmer movie another Milwaukee Connection he wrote the John Wayne Gacy movie and so it's like I guess that's thing nothing but garbage and yet somehow I don't know how we've Rowell I don't know how that fits in all this but it's possible it was a database mistake exact name yeah but yeah there's a part where wishpond girl comes over and the younger sister of her friend is like can I come hang out with you guys and she was easy grasshopper maybe next time I'm like was that kungfu is like the David Carradine show from 1916 like teenagers not referencing kungfu no that's they're not even referencing kung fu the adventure continues but yeah yeah it's painfully painfully obvious well then there's just general dumb dialogue like they talked about how is Slenderman he spreads like a virus but not like a real virus like a computer virus it's like the same thing but where it infects and it spreads it's the exact same thing she goes on to explain that in even further she's like where it's it's a computer virus in your hard drive except for your hard drive is your brain that's an actual line by the way since the hard drive is your brain you yes so there was a there's a that roly-poly fat kid and I was like he's slender man's gonna make him eat candy yeah and then nothing happened I was waiting for that like they're like almost like a nightmare and Elm Street thing especially more as the sequels went on it's like he has you have your fear they established that in the beginning of the movie Freddy exploits that to scare you and eventually kill you Ron ik death yes ironic deaths and instead this movie has nothing yeah and and I'm curious like not that it would help too much but I would want to know what was cut out because this movie has absolutely nothing in it it has a set up and then nothing happens for the remainder of the film it sets up Slenderman the girls are having a little like like sleepover party and they look up a Thunder man on the internet and I guess a video on the that's posted on the Internet makes Slender Man start to haunt them in real life all other ring but then the rest of the movie is just there's no like story progression there's no plot it's just scene after scene of one of our characters wandering around and then slenderman's in the corner well the first girl goes missing then they set up if you look into slender man's eyes you go crazy second girl goes crazy they establish early on its Slenderman will react differently to you depending on who you are and so that's sort of like a like a okay then that means that nothing in the movie like there's no way to determine where the story is gonna go or what's gonna happen with anybody it's just whatever that's my big point I always want to get to with horror films yeah is rules rules are so important because you have to know what's happening you know what to be scared of that's why I named random street it's such a perfect script and perfect idea because you know the rulz hmm there's nothing to be scared of if you don't know consequences or rules right I've said it a billion times ever feels like it's going anywhere the things like it's like almost exactly ninety minutes and it felt like it was three hours and it felt like it could have ended at any time because nothing moved anything forward the story elements our first girl to disappear she was interested in Slenderman secretly yeah and so she chanted with someone who about Slenderman she looked at videos she's the one who gets kidnapped first then wishpond girl really starts to digging into it because the other two don't really care too much I thought wish bond girl was supposed to be the lead and then she's just not she digs into it and she finds out oh you have to give Slenderman an offering of something that you care about so they bring out like the one girl brings like a picture of her and her dad and there's a quilt my grandma made when she was dying in the hospital this is my favorite teddy bear and then they like rip him up and throw him in the way I'm like that's not what Slenderman is talking about yeah they can't say that in the movies oh yeah and then and then then the one girl even though she made an offering Slenderman shows up in her bedroom and I guess chokes her and then she looks in the mirror and there's nobody there then she's crazy which makes sense in the cutscene where she stabbed herself in the eyeball right but then she just disappears that's gone from the movie the main girl who has a little sister who has a little sister her little sister has panic attack and ends up in the hospital and I think Slenderman is trying to kill the little sister I don't know what's happening well there's a revelation of sorts where wishpond girl we find out that she took her friend's little sisters right into the woods I guess as a sacrifice they make it very vague there might have been more that was cut so it didn't resemble the real-life incident I don't know yeah then Slenderman has her in his grasp but what I don't know what that means the it's like they said well we need some kind of origin for Slenderman because we can't just say somebody photoshopped it on the internet so wishpond girl goes to the library oh yeah she goes to the library to look at the internet library yeah she has to go to the library to use their computer to log on to to AOL and do some research yeah but she does find out like a book about the paranormal although there is a lot of phones and iPhones chatting and stuff in this zone that was probably a rewrite by some 18-year old intern at the studio he looked at the script he's like what the [ __ ] is this people can see each other on their phones what the Jetsons it's it's called FaceTime what but anyway so the point I was making was which Bond girl goes to the library does her research which says Slenderman is a bioelectric paranormal interdimensional being I have yeah something and there's stories all over the world going back to the Pied Piper of Hamelin do steal children from this culture this culture to this culture they all have a creepy monster in-laws and histories mystical legends of on creatures that steal children it's probably us Linda ban Slenderman see what he looks like now in the 2000s yeah and we learn you can also be a tree he's also has some connections in trees and then so it's like it's like it's not like if Freddy Krueger was a guy who killed children and got burned alive so it's spirit hung around and can kill you in your dreams it's just got it Slenderman something yeah you could just do anything that's the do anything that's the ultimate problem we tried to make a Slenderman movie is that the things that people think are interesting or creepy about Slenderman are how like you just see random photos and it's like oh it's a photo I don't know the context I don't know the backstory but there's like a creepy thing in the background and that's word in the context of just like looking up random [ __ ] on the internet when you try and make a narrative story out of that it loses everything that makes the idea of Slenderman interesting to begin with the actual scary story is that two girls in real life got [ __ ] up by the internet so badly they tried to murder their friend that's a real-life horror that's a real scary story right but but even as far as like creepypasta not just Slenderman but all that [ __ ] in general it's it's the idea that it's just like created on the internet it's little snippets of things it's a photo here it's a short story there and there is no attempt to put it in the framework of like a conventional narrative feature its its its own thing so it might have been to their benefit that they didn't try to over explain no but they under explain for the type of movie they're making it doesn't it doesn't work on any level that's the problem yeah I mean it is a good like challenge to say like how do you make Slenderman movie you know see I think also the problem too is that this movie was like like a flatline in terms of scares and moments and even like how God is so ugly looking the the very first shots are extreme handheld close-ups of two of the girls sitting on like bleachers yes talking and it's like this and you're like what am I looking at where are they why is it shot like this there's numerous extreme close-ups at locations and part of me is wondering in like did they do that - like like save money on like extras and and location you know that sort of thing why is this movie so claustrophobic why is it so ugly it's so flat looking I mean even though it just starts you know it also just ends but just look at me bad and I was like why isn't there an opening like where there's a little girl like at her family's campsite and she wanders off and you know she's running and she's screaming and she drops her teddy bear and her per kid sitting around a campfire say let me tell you about slender man well sir they spell that that that's crazy I got to go off at now I have a leak yeah and it goes off and smokes a little doobie and then I mean I guess you know you're talking kind of goofy horror cliche but it's better than absolutely nothing you gotta have some kind of spooky opening to start off your film to to establish what this creature will do to you or start it completely grounded in reality get a get us where we understand these characters and like them so when you start introducing the horror we give a [ __ ] well we're supposed to like that one they had their slumber party in there they're talking teenager talk oh do you like Billy I like really do you spend too much time running track my dad drinks and sometimes I wish I could just go away slender man Calgon take me away they want Oh Calgon take me away maybe they would if they know grasshopper screenwriter no it's Calgon take me away I gotta go take a bath Calgon take how do you know about that ad campaign from 1980 to luxury about Calgon dead there is some random imagery that's actually kind of interesting looking it feels out of place cuz it's nothing more than random imagery like it doesn't connect with anything like you're speaking of the hospital sequence yes the girl are lead I forget her name she her sisters in the hospital and she keeps having like out-of-body experiences or dreams waking dreams something that's the thing was we don't know walk around the hospital and everyone looked kind of looks creepy and she walks past rooms it's like a woman with super long hair and the orderlies like brushing it but he has no eye that's like Jacob's Ladder or something yes Lee with the missing face so the distorts meet very reminiscent of a scene from Nightmare on Elm Street [Music] now what a nightmare now sir you know Oh our character is in a dream our character has fallen asleep she is in danger of being killed in real life because when Freddy finds her he will stab her this I understand the things that are happening in the story I understand what's happening in the story and I understand the danger this character is in that we like but in here it's girl the girl wanders around the creepy imagery happens because it's nonsense it is scene after scene of one of our characters wandering around and then Slenderman not a lot of jump scares though no instead they replaced it with nothing it seemed like everyone was like a zombie yes like they were just like bored and dead inside and there was one moment that stuck out when wish upon girl goes to the little library and then and then the library is like this dark dingy look in place and then and then she has a slender man attack sequence slender bends like and he's stretching out the bookshelves and his having at you this lunderman doesn't talk but it would be great if he did and then all of a sudden like oh her face turns into Slenderman face yeah and then BAM she's knocked back into reality when she hits a book cart and there's a pre-established librarian lady who was was there before the dream sequence or nightmare sequence happened she's like are you okay miss and then the girl gets up and she's like wanders off and leaves and the scene is over and then they show the librarian and she goes and really I wanted that like well you know a name in Elm Street the adults don't ever believe them right and they're always just oh you're just having a dream you're crazy and so the librarians just like Oh lay off the booze honey go back to class I really had a scary incident with the Slenderman sure you did get the [ __ ] out of the library it's closing soon you need that you need those little like like moment where they make the characters feel almost helpless and that's makes you fear for them where the adults don't believe them they go to try to get help so-and-so is kidnapped by the Slenderman here look at all this evidence Slenderman that's just some crazy internet phenomenon you kids new kids in your chat boards get out of my office you need humanity yeah you need people acting like people this movie was just like it's like flatline sucked and so that's where I blame the director yeah we're the directors if he cared I mean you have a script by this old hack and it was like and our director would say okay how about so-and-so does this how about they have this quirky characteristic or how about so-and-so does this or says this or this side character in the background does this I don't know give it some life yeah well so let's talk about the the end of the movie which is to say the movie just stops no there's our dad I didn't know what was happening but there was a conclusion well kind of I mean they establish early on you have to sacrifice something you care about - Slenderman and so they have to earlier on the other they have the photo of the dad or whatever apparently those were things they really cared about or didn't care about enough or something and so main girls little sisters now being haunted by Slenderman wishpond girl gets pulled out of a window by Slenderman and she's never seen again black girlfriend has just vanished from the movie boyfriend character shows up in class and he's got like a bruise on his arm and he's acting weird she's like what's what's wrong with you and he just kind of goes and then he's never seen in the movie again don't know what that's about he told him not to watch the video but you know he watched the video I guess but there's no conclusion to it this is we don't see what happens to him lots of disappearing characters more disappearing characters than the Avengers infinity war why is it dead silent so then the girl realizes that she needs to sacrifice herself to save her sister and save all of her friends so she goes into the woods and she says Slenderman I'm here take me away and Slenderman turns into a tree and absorbs her and then the movies over I don't know what happened to the other friends we don't really know what happens to the sister other than she survives well she says Slenderman take me and then he's like okay and then she runs oh yeah then she tries to get away and then he takes her forcefully it would have been a better ending if if Slenderman I guess I guess this would have been tasteless too but it would have been a better ending if Slenderman had the three other girls like kind of held hostage almost well that's what I was waiting for and then she sacrifices herself and her friends are let free-for-all back or or he tricks or something or she takes her little sister into the woods it's time to hang out with us cuz I was set up earlier yeah it's yeah I want to hang out with you girls you know well you want to hang out with us come on and then I got dark ending jar is a horror movie and Slenderman goes in and then they say you sacrificed your little sister well it was either her the three of you Slenderman made a real tough choice cuz he's a real bad guy he's what they call a horror movie villain and and he made me do it instead he's just a tree and then they said was it worth it girl was it worth it and then they she goes like this and then and then cuts the Slenderman he goes and then that goes over the credits yes and this is this movie did nothing it sucked it was so boring it's but it's not even it's not a complete movie that's the thing the stuff that was pulled out of it the the hampering down of anything horrific to get a pg-13 the fact that they pulled out so much of the story the the horrific elements that it's not even a horror movie anymore it's just nothing yes it's kind of amazing yeah just let this let this whole whole thing just die I'm not talking about slender I'm talking about Sony Pictures oh well you can't spell Sony without no.2 work for a department hey you can't spell Sony without y1 up to [ __ ] [Music]

Channel: RedLetterMedia

Views: 1,680,496

Keywords: redlettermedia, red letter media, red, letter, media, plinkett, half in the bag, mike stoklasa, jay bauman, rich evans, slender man, slenderman, sony

Id: WXHmIAo61fM

Length: 34min 10sec (2050 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 15 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/BattleUpSaber]

Huh, who would have thought that Slender Man and Unfriended are set in the same Cinematic Universe.

The Dark Web is the key to all of this.

[u/battraman]

That laugh at the Sony logo is up there as one of Mike's craziest laughs.

[u/DerFreshmeat]

At one point Mike mentions 9/11 without bursting into laughter. I wonder how many hours they spent on that one take.

[u/AussieHawker]

I wonder at what point they just stop watching movies they actually want to see, and just turn the entire channel into Best of the Worst.

[u/BionicTriforce]

I truly love how after so many years of knowing each other, and what I can only assume is seeing each other every day, these two can still make each other laugh.

[u/Heraclitus94]

I enjoy this new trend of "We aren't seeing the movies people want us to see"

[u/dirtside]

The credits said "Also Starring Rich Evans" but I didn't notice him in the episode. Was he lurking in the background like Slender Man at some point, or do they always credit him whether he shows up or not?

[u/shevchenko7cfc]

"It infects and spreads! ITS THE SAME FUCKING THING" - Jay Bauman, 2018

[u/OnTheProwl-]

Mike didn't mention Star Trek... I don't know how to feel about this.