Slenderman The Live Action Experience Review (2017)

Before we get too far along, it should be mentioned that there’s not supposed to be a wide variety of ‘monsters’ or characters here. Since the story revolves around the legend and, specifically, the popular game that involves finding the 8 pages, the only characters you’ll see are Slenderman’s minions, regular people/victims that have lost their way and driven themselves insane, and finally, the ‘slender’ miscreant himself. We didn’t run across all that many of them but there were just enough to keep us focused on the task at hand.

With that said, each of the actors knew their roles quite well. Most of the minions quietly antagonized us’ warning our group of our impending doom and really adding to the natural suspense of the dark woods! The victims did an exceptional job and really made us believe they’d lost a few screws upstairs with their skin-crawling screams! In fact, one of the most believable cast members was a victim in the clown area that was wearing makeup (instead of a mask). Because Slenderman has no discernable face, he doesn’t really get to say much. Instead, he just freaks you out by appearing out of seemingly nowhere! Yep, he’s one of those guys where, no matter how fast you run (which you aren’t allowed to do, by the way), he’s always right behind you!

Similarly, there isn’t much variety when it comes to costuming here. Almost each of the characters were wearing black street clothes and identical, white, plastic masks. Even though the wardrobe is a bit plain, it’s accurate to the theme and really helps them blend in with the rest of the darkness around them. Seeing a floating, white, emotionless face come floating out at you has its way of sending chills down your spine!

The few victims that we saw tended to wear makeup instead of the masks. This set them apart from the ‘maskies’ and helped us believe they could’ve actually been normal at one time.

Slenderman was true to his character: unproportionately-long limbs, a tuxedo-esque outfit and an all-white head that you won’t soon forget once you’ve seen it!

There are several signs by the road for each of the attractions at the Asylum complex, but they were only made visible with one small (and pretty dim) light, so be sure to keep an eye out for it if you haven’t been here before. Regardless, it let us know we were at the right place and our GPS took us straight there.

After we parked, we followed more Halloween- and haunt-related signs through their gate and up to the ticket booth. A green screen is in place where you can get your photos taken with a cool ‘Slenderman’ background (included with the Slenderman Fan ticket combo). A large concession trailer was on-site as well and offers an assortment of drinks and goodies, including Slenderman t-shirts for $15.00.

If you haven’t been here before, walk towards the woods from the ticket booth and turn left once you get past the big white tent. This will take you to the waiting line. If you’ve been to Asylum before, it’s the same waiting line that they use for Darkness Falls. There were several friendly staff members roaming the park, as well as at the entrance and exit to Slenderman if you have any questions.

The trail itself is pretty smooth walking. Not many tree roots or other trip hazards, but there are some intentional sliding floors and small ramps going in and out of some of the scenes. No running is permitted due to the lack of lighting’ the staff should warn you of this before you start and the ‘maskies’ won’t let you forget it either.

Upon arrival, the park was rather quiet and calm. It continued to stay this way until we approached the queue line for Slenderman, which helped set the overall mood for the attraction. We then found ourselves face-to-face with the spooky facade to Darkness Falls and a giant Slenderman overlooking us as we waited our turn. There’s something about Asylum that makes it a very dark place and this was very evident in the queue area. It was so dark in areas off in the distance that it can make your mind play tricks on you! Every now and then, we could hear a few screams coming from within the woods, which made us wonder if they were those of other customers, or if they were the result of something far more sinister’

To reiterate, the path for Slenderman takes you through portions of their haunted trail, ‘Darkness Falls.’ During our visit, the typical lights, movements and sounds for the trail were intentionally non-existent for Slenderman. This experience is meant to be very different than your normal haunted trail, so they rely very heavily on the darkness, the total silence and your own mind to play tricks on you, rather than a lot of special effects.

You’ll still walk through many of their structures and decorated scenes, which include an overturned bus, ‘Shanty Town,’ a cemetery, a junkyard, a voodoo area, a large church and more. Even without their normal lighting, most of the scenes are still very creepy to look at’ especially with only a flashlight to light the way! If you’re the unlucky one that isn’t holding the light, the dashing shadows and albeit total darkness can easily leave you feeling vulnerable with the nagging thought of being left in the dark by yourself. Yeah, it’s that creepy.

Even though it was very quiet in many areas, the places where we did notice sounds intensified the creepiness of our walk. Some of the other effects we came across were lots of bloody decor, piles of dead bodies and an unnerving ‘hallway’ of lifeless mannequins.

Before entering the attraction, we were given a short spiel on Slenderman and what our mission was: to find and keep all 8 pages. (By the way, you’ll know what you’re looking for because each of the pages have theme-related markings and symbols on them). We were also informed that, while searching, we must ‘avoid Slenderman at all costs.’ This is rather difficult to do considering ‘he’s always watching.’ If you get too close to him, one of your pages will be marked or taken away, resulting in a loss for the challenge.

For those of you who are not familiar with this tall, skinny thing that has no eyes, we were told ‘Slenderman is a myth… a legend… and he only comes around when you’re thinking about him.’ Well, we must have been thinking about it a lot because it seemed like he was all over the place out there! Theme-related dialogue was used throughout the attraction and adding the purpose of finding pages kept the thought of him possibly lurking around every corner right in the front of our minds the entire time!

The dark, demented forest that Slenderman dwells in was not the only creepy thing we came across. At one point, the maskies even tried to convince our group to split up! Now we don’t know about you, but when you have two people and one flashlight, it doesn’t seem very smart to split up (at least for whoever doesn’t have the light)! We were also sneakingly stalked on several occasions and repeatedly warned, ‘He’s behind you…’ We struggled with the urge to look behind us while knowing that, if we did, we’d likely have one of our pages taken away.

With all of the scenes and decor on the trail, there were lots of prime hiding spots for the actors to take advantage of. While there were some missed scare opportunities, there were just few enough actors to keep you looking around each and every corner’ trying to catch a glimpse of the next one that’s ready to jump out at you! If you let yourself really get into this event and the storyline, then seeing the actual Slenderman can be the equivalent of spotting a hungry pack of wolves coming after you! After all, it is a sort of ‘game’ and intended to be a scary way to have some fun with your friends. When we did see him, all we wanted to do was run from him; but, of course, we couldn’t… so we kicked our gaits into ‘power walk’ mode and hastily got away from him as fast as we could!

General admission to take your chance at surviving Slenderman and finding all 8 pages is $10.00 per person.
There is also a ‘Slenderman Fan’ ticket package available that grants you general admission with a souvenir photo for $20.00. It took our group about 15 ������������������ minutes to navigate the path that was marked off for this event, putting their MPD (minutes of entertainment received per dollar spent) at 1.55, which is just above the average of what we see at most haunts. The experience will be running on Thursdays in October and limited tickets are available each night, so you may consider reserving your tickets online. This is a very unique haunted attraction event that everyone should try at least once, especially if you are the type who enjoys a scavenger hunt or playing games.