Keep it to Creepypasta
Slender Man, an urban legend born from internet horror forums that inspired IRL stabbings, arson and suicide attempts, now has a movie on the way. The trailer, filled with lazy scary movie jumps, maggots and instances of posession, is by all means terrible.
The most notorious case involving the internet horror fable, said to be a tall, faceless man that collects children, is that of two young girls that stabbed a classmate in Wisconsin as an offering to Slender Man. The victim was stabbed 19 times, but survived the attack. Anissa Weier was charged with second degree intentional homicide and was sentenced to 25 years in a mental institution. Morgan Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first degree intentional homicide, and faces 40 years in an institution.
The father of one of the girls convicted of attempted murder, Bill Weier, has come forward to condemn the film. He told Associated Press: “It’s absurd they want to make a movie like this. It’s popularising a tragedy is what it’s doing. I’m not surprised but in my opinion it’s extremely distasteful. All we’re doing is extending the pain all three of these families have gone through.”
Slender Man has been captured across Internet ephemera, appearing first online in 2009 as a meme born from the online horror story page Creepypasta. The term “proxies” floats around stories of the creature, defined as those he chooses to do his bidding. His infamy is based off pseudo-documentary footage, pages and pages of fan-fic and photoshopped images of a tall, thin, faceless man who preys on people. This movie however is the first feature-length film. It’s directed by Sylvain White, and Javier Botet stars as the creature.
It’s not totally clear how much of the story involving Geyser and Weier this film will reference, but footage shows Slender Man stalking a young girl, and sketches similar to those Geyser drew. Elsewhere in the trailer it’s made very clear Slender Man is Bad and Scary and conjures maggots as well as weird clumps of hair from eyeballs. All the usual shit. A girl stabs herself in the head during science class while another emerges from the woods with some sort of blood beard around her mouth. Overall, it’s distasteful and about as industry-shaking as Paranormal Activity 3.
A HBO documentary, Beware the Slender Man, was released last year chronicling the real-life events inspired by the character.
Watch the trailer below.
