Beware the Slenderman

This documentary is an interesting look into how a supernatural internet meme can influence young minds. In this case, 2 young girls were convinced that an an internet creation, Slenderman, made them stab fellow classmate in the woods.

The documentary delves into the mental illness and how dangerous unsupervised internet can be for susceptible minds. I also took away how unprepared the court / prison systems can be when dealing with mental issues and how there is no real rehabilitation process in place - these young girls can only have 2 contact visits with their family each month.

There are some genuinely creepy parts - especially the part where one of the girls tells her family that the "others" decide what she watches on TV in her cell at night even though she is kept in solitary confinement.

However a bit too long and one sided - the 2 girls are not really the victim

Beware of the Slenderman was well-received at its world premiere at Austin's SXSW Film Festival. It is a true crime story about two 12-year-old girls who attempt to kill another young girl. The film, which will be broadcast in the near future on HBO. They are telling an intriguing story, but they try to tell too many stories. It seems obvious from the beginning that the girls are suffering from severe mental illness and that's the primary explanation for their violent behavior. Their behavior appears to be linked to mythic internet creature called Slenderman. Some of the most intellectual parts are their explorations of myth and folklore and how people come to rely on them. But then they seem to want to blame mental illness on misuse of the Internet. They don't seem to realize that there are mentally ill people who acted out violently long before there was the Internet. Long before "Slenderman" there were young people with psychological issues. And then spend a lot of time talking to the kids' troubled parents who feel responsible. And they explore the court procedures around their story. And they keep going on and on. They can't really figure out what story they are telling. At two hours the film simply goes on too long and goes off on too many tangents. They repeat their themes over and over without really getting that far. In the end, they could have told this troubling story a lot better and lot more simply. It is still an entertaining story, but it could have been a lot better.

It's like there wasn't even a victim in this story. So sad. You would have thought the two criminals were the victims. I kept waiting to see a statement about how the victim and her family declined to participate. It never came. Their voices were so painfully absent. All tangled up in all the wrong things.

Overall it was certainly interesting, even captivating. But I found myself wanting so badly to hear from poor Payton. The only victim, along with her loved ones.

It will be interesting to see how it all turns out.

All the details about how internet myths start was so scary. And how kids are being raised now is scariest of all.

This started off as a fascinating insight in to a horrific crime and it's young instigators but it is far too insular in its focus. By the 60 minute mark I was satisfied that the assailants motivations had been biasely justified, the whole "slenderman" and mythology in general had been thoroughly covered and I was craving for the story to expand in to the physiology of the young impressionable mind, into psychopathy (a blatantly obvious trait of at least one of the girls) and for the focus to switch to the victim and her family (in a respectful way, considering they didn't want to be involved), their complete ommission from the documentary plays out as an indifference to their horrific experience instead. I was also surprised with the multiple mentions of "believers" needing a group to belong to and the brainwashing involved in that dynamic, that the documentary makers weren't brave enough to bring up religion in that discussion (especially as a world leading expert on the subject Richard Dawkins was on a Skype call at one point)... But no they only used santa clause and the tooth fairy as examples.

While the documentary seeks to explore several themes around mental health, modern folklore, bullying, and modern technology's role in adolescent development and parenting it seldom finds a coherent thread to pull them together in any meaningful way. The film starts interestingly enough exploring the story of two adolescent girls who are pending trial as adults for the attempted murder of their friend. This in and of itself would make for a compelling case study on mandatory laws surrounding the subject of violent crimes committed by minors. Add to that the fact that the girls committed this act to gain the favor of a modern fictional boogeyman named Slenderman, and we now have the potential for an even more compelling discussion around mental health, the internet's influence on child development, modern parenting and any number of related topics. Unfortunately, this is where the narrative seems to stall with the filmmakers doing little more than exploring the folklore of Slenderman and how the girls' mutual status as outsiders may have led them to seek acceptance through belief in the fictional being. Though the filmmakers make several attempts to explore other themes including mental health (which arguably should be the central narrative), they seldom make it past a cursory examination of the facts as they exist, and attempt to draw little to no conclusion about how these facts should influence the outcome of the still pending trial. Perhaps this stance, or lack there-of, is out of respect for the victim in this tragic case, which is surprisingly absent through most of the discussion. The result however, is a story that would be thought provoking as a 30 minute true-crime new story, but feels a bit drawn out as the handful of facts are repeated ad nauseum, rarely digging past the surface of any single topic.