Beware the Slen­der­man – first look review

The aver­age inter­net meme seems designed to be giv­en only a second’s thought (or a second’s scroll). Our sen­si­tiv­i­ty is numbed again and again until the ten­drils of a tall, suit­ed, face­less man reach out and pierce their way through. Slen­der­man, who has inhab­it­ed web sto­ries, art­work, Pho­to­Shopped images and YouTube videos since 2009, has proved as irre­sistible as he is icon­ic. In many ver­sions, he haunts chil­dren, in oth­ers he acts as a guardian to the lone­ly, the bul­lied and the troubled.

Irene Tay­lor Brodsky’s dev­as­tat­ing doc­u­men­tary takes us gen­tly by the hand and leads us to a safe space, one in which fam­i­ly secrets and brows­ing his­to­ries can be uncov­ered. It fol­lows then 12 year olds Mor­gan Geyser and Anis­sa Weier as they are accused of, and recount, the stab­bing of their class­mate Pay­ton Leut­ner 19 times in woods out­side Wauke­sha Coun­ty, Wis­con­sin. Both girls, now incar­cer­at­ed await­ing appeals, said they had planned the stab­bing – which Pay­ton sur­vived – to please Slen­der­man and pro­tect their families.

Police inter­views and court­room footage, news reports and con­ver­sa­tions with Mor­gan and Anissa’s par­ents are spliced with unset­tling clips, draw­ings and Skype chats with experts. Brod­sky comes at Slen­der­man from every angle, even invit­ing com­par­isons to the Pied Piper. What will haunt you, though, is not the chill­ing imag­in­ings of ter­ri­fied chil­dren or the psy­chol­o­gy the­o­ries behind the character’s grip but the idea that it’s impos­si­ble to ever ful­ly pro­tect those drawn to this type of fiction.

The truths con­tained with­in this sin­gu­lar sto­ry hit home with unex­pect­ed force. The iso­lat­ed teen. The dan­gers of the inter­net. The ​“if only” nar­ra­tive. The unre­li­able accounts. For any­one who has vis­it­ed a loved one being treat­ed, pro­tect­ed or detained, the ache of uncer­tain­ty described by Anissa’s moth­er, as she leaves the deten­tion cen­tre, is also painful­ly recog­nis­able. How many times will she make the return jour­ney with­out an extra passenger?

At 117 min­utes the film is a lit­tle too long, while some tonal shifts fall flat. Still, it is ele­vat­ed above by-the-num­bers true crime by respect­ing reg­u­lar ​“drain­ing” days, in which the girls remain con­fined, and nudg­ing at an explo­ration of per­son­al, blur­ry bor­ders between fan­ta­sy and real­i­ty. Such gut-wrench­ing sto­ries of what can hap­pen when minds break down are few and far between. By the end, the abil­i­ty to let a meme pass over you, unaf­fect­ed, unmoved, appears to be less an atten­tion deficit, more an invalu­able gift.