Cuidado com o 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

It seems to me most of the people who don't like this movie feel that way simply because they think these girls are "evil".

I DO have sympathy for these girls because I am very familiar with schizophrenia and schizo-typo mental disorders, and can see beyond the black/white dichotomy of good and evil that people like to cling to. I thought the interviews with the parents were crucial in establishing the mind-frame of the kids at the time, as well as showing the guilt and anguish that a parent feels in the aftermath of your child committing a brutal crime. Never did I feel like the film was excusing the horrific nature of the crime, but trying to draw out how it ended up happening in the first place.

I know that people have voiced criticism that there was little on the victim - that is because the victim's family declined to participate (totally within their rights, and totally understandable). But the fact of the matter is, with cases like these, the important part is to study the perpetrators -- how do you prevent horrors like this from happening if you don't understand HOW they came to happen?

Personally, I thought the section about urban folklore, and how it can multiply rapidly on the internet to be really interesting.

I'm a true crime doc, and I thought this was well done.

Others have summarized this documentary far better than I can. I will just reiterate that the movie is far too long. There is a lengthy description of folklore and horror stories, which could have been cut down considerably.

Then there are the interviews with the parents of the two perpetrators, which also could have been cut down. It seems like there is a lot of repetition.

This movie could have been tightened up and submitted as a short- subject documentary, and I think it would have been better.

I did like the courtroom sequences; however, the cases are not yet resolved. Perhaps the film-maker could have waited another six months to give the story a better conclusion? Obviously the appeals are going to drag on for years, but at least show the audience the outcome of the trials, which apparently are taking place in the spring of 2017.

I also would have liked to have heard from the victim, or a member of the victim's family.

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.

It seems as though the victim in this, Payton Leutner, is just a footnote to this story. She was talked about very little, almost as if she were just some random classmate. I kept waiting to hear from her or her family, and when I didn't, I waited for a disclaimer that they didn't want to be interviewed, but neither happened. The film portrayed a lot of sympathy for the girls, and I have none. They had planned out this attack. Even at 12 years old, you know killing someone is wrong. But watching their families go on and on about how hard it was to be without their daughters and how it was so upsetting, it is easy to see why the girls themselves were so self-centered. They showed no remorse for killing her whatsoever. This film could have been so much better. What a disappointment.