By Robert Scucci
| Published
They say that you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet because there is so much misinformation floating around out there, but sometimes we can’t help ourselves. For as long as humanity has had the ability to tell stories, folklore and tall tales have been forms of entertainment that mirror our own lives as a means to make sense of our existence and whatever existential quandaries we face on a daily basis. 2016’s Beware the Slenderman, an HBO original streaming on Max, aims to unpack just how modern folklore birthed through the internet has real-life consequences when fiction is regarded as fact, and how grave the consequences can be when a mythological creature like the Slender Man takes on a life of its own despite the fact that it has always been a work of fiction.
Beware the Slenderman goes into the creation of the Slender Man, the mythology surrounding him, and the harrowing incident known as the Slender Man Stabbing that took place in Wisconsin back in 2014 when two girls, Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, stabbed their friend, Payton “Bella” Leutner, 19 times to appease the fictional character who allegedly influenced their behavior.
Slender Man Started As A Photoshop Contest
The Slender Man’s origin can be tracked down to the Something Awful forums in 2009, when Eric Knudsen entered the paranormal Photoshop contest that inspired him to create the creature. Beware the Slenderman explains that the creature – a tall and skinny, faceless and tentacled man in a suit – became so popular because online users started writing their own folklore about the being that reflected their own fears and anxieties in ways similar to traditional folk stories.
As the Slender Man’s popularity began to grow, so did the imaginations of Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, who became obsessed with the Slender Man, which led to their attempted murder of Bella. Feeling as if she were under the Slender Man’s spell, Morgan Geyser became increasingly paranoid, and claims she was instructed by the Slender Man to kill Bella before meeting him at his home, Slender Mansion.
Where Were Their Parents?
Geyser and Wesier’s parents are interviewed extensively in Beware the Slenderman, and their primary concern is how to handle supervising the online activity of their other children after the stabbing took place. Growing concerned over the amount of screen time their kids are required to have through iPads and other devices for their studies, they wonder what else they could do outside of supervising their children 24/7. But as the documentary goes deeper into Morgan Geyser’s psyche at the time of the murder, we learn that she was suffering from auditory visual and auditory hallucinations that she didn’t tell her parents – who are by all accounts active and attentive parents – about.
Revealing Interrogations
Though there are no first-hand accounts from Bella (who thankfully survived) in Beware the Slenderman, we learn through interrogation footage how Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier reacted to the crime they had just committed shortly after they were apprehended. Given the severity of their crimes, they were both tired as adults, but not without a lengthy legal battle to determine how mentally fit each girl was at the time of the stabbing.
Beware the Slenderman provides a unique look at how sometimes internet memes and urban legends can get out of hand and have real life consequences. What I appreciated most is how the Slender Man Stabbing was framed as an isolated incident without placing blame on the Slender Man’s creator, Eric Knudsen. While there’s no clear-cut answer on how the stabbing itself could have been prevented given the course of events that Beware the Slenderman tries to make sense of, it still serves as a cautionary tale about just how quickly truth can become stranger than a collaborative work of fiction.
You can stream Beware the Slenderman on Max.
