HBO Goes Inside Slenderman, the Murderous Internet Meme
The crime was so bizarre and gruesome, it looked like something from a crossover episode of Black Mirror and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In the spring of 2014, two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin, lured a friend into the woods, stabbed her 19 times, then left her to die. Their justification: A supernatural horror character, Slenderman, made them do it. The stunning act was also a grave betrayal of friendship, defying everything we think we knew about girlhood and innocence in the internet era.
As trials against the two young perpetrators, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, gear up to begin later this year, an HBO documentary, Beware the Slenderman, out January 23, tells the grisly story of how a childhood friendship went horribly awry, and how an obsession with an internet meme ended in attempted murder. Emmy Award–winning director Irene Taylor Brodsky (One Last Hug: Three Days at Grief Camp) gained extraordinary access to the families of the two attackers, starting just a couple months after the crime.
opens with a –style montage: A young girl lurches through the dark woods, frantically shining a flashlight at leafless branches as she gasps for air. A strange buzzing hums in the background. Suddenly, the camera holds on a figure hovering behind
