The inevitable Slender Man horror movie is finally here, because apparently the fact that he inspired a real life murder isn’t horrifying enough!
You might remember that Slender Man first appeared as a creepypasta meme on the forum Something Awful, created by Eric Knudsen. This movie, which comes out in May and is directed by The Losers’ Sylvain White, has a disturbingly minimalist trailer, all graveyards and dark forests that look like they’ve been covered in an Instagram filter. “Where is my daughter? People don’t just disappear,” a voice asks.
While Slender Man barely makes an appearance, from the trailer it seems like he appears to possess a bunch of teenage girls. “He gets in your head, like a virus,” one girl warns. And considering the fact that the character actually inspired two young girls to murder another just four years ago, a story that was turned into a documentary last year, the movie’s existence is a questionable. Will I probably still be there in theaters to see it? Yes, yes indeed.
DISCUSSION
I like some horror, but I’m not exactly crazy about this. It’s not as if the Slenderman story were some sort of long-time myth dating back centuries; it’s a fairly recent invention that ended up capturing the imagination of some girls with mental illness who nearly killed another child and left her with lasting traumatic stress of her own. It’s a little too close, too soon.