If you know anything about pop culture and urban legends you know The Slenderman. A faceless figure, dressed in a black suit who abducts people, taking them to who knows where. In some cases this malevolent, inter dimensional being provokes people to kill for him.Originating from CreepyPasta, this internet meme immediately began festering in the dark, nightmarish corners of the world wide web. Indiewire debuted the poster for the upcoming HBO documentary, Beware the Slenderman directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky . The feature is making its premiere this Friday at SXSW.
Beware the Slenderman, focuses on the fictional figure to explore not only the effect that internet legends and lore have on real-life actions. The doc goes further to examine how the digital age is saturating the imagination and actions of the people that use it, in particular, children.
©HBO Films
BEWARE THE SLENDERMAN tells the story of the internet’s elusive Boogeyman and two 12-year-old girls who would kill for him. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier lured their best friend into the woods, stabbed her 19 times, then set out on an odyssey to meet the tall and faceless man known online as Slenderman. Shot over 18 months with heartbreaking access to the families of the would-be murderers, the film plunges deep down the rabbit hole of their crime, a Boogeyman and our society’s most impressionable consumers of media. The entrance to the internet can quickly lead us to its dark basement, within just a matter of clicks. How much do we hold children responsible for what they find there?
C’mon guys. Slenderman. This is the stuff of nightmares. Who’s excited to see it?
