Beware the Slenderman Review: HBO’s Latest True Crime Doc is What Nightmares are Made of

Air Date: Monday January 23, 2017, 10:00 pm ET/PT on HBO

★★★★★

“He can be anywhere from 6 feet to 14 feet tall. He doesn’t have a face. His skin is white.” — Anissa Weier.

In 2014, two 12-year-old girls lured their friend and classmate into the woods, then proceeded to stab her 19 times, leaving her for dead. They did this all to appease a fictional monster known as “Slenderman.”

The horrific events caught national attention, leaving people stunned by how such a violent crime could be carried out by children, and even more by young girls from Waukesha, Wisconsin. Curiosities only grew stronger when it was revealed perpetrators Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser attempted murder because of their unyielding belief in an imaginary character that thrives in the dark corners of the internet.

Fan art of Slenderman

HBO’s latest documentary, Beware the Slenderman, explores the chilling crime and sets out to provide an answer to the question on everyone’s mind: why did two pre-adolescent girls try to kill their friend? Director Irene Taylor Brodsky looks at every angle, spending a large portion of the film with Morgan and Anissa’s families. The director follows them as they try to cope with what has happened and as they attempt to piece together answers through slivers of hindsight.

When children commit crimes, the first reaction is to blame the parents – their inattention, lack of involvement, and general negligence. Brodsky undermines all of this. In each moment spent with the families, we see loving and attentive parents—families who only want to provide the best for their children.

Anissa’a father, William, laments that his daughter only had a few unregulated hours on the internet via her iPad daily. He recalls only seeing one drawn sketch of hers of Slenderman with Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas, but none of this stood out as dangerous.

William Weier

Time spent with William during the film showcases his palpable struggle. He has memorialized Anissa’s room, keeping it clean and preserved, waiting for her return. Brodsky includes a scene with William, along with the family cat, as he brushes his teeth, and puts on a tie to get ready for court. William absently pets the cat, taking a deep breath before walking out, as though he is preparing for battle. The scene, although brief, encapsulates such a normal, mundane part of life that hints at the larger picture: these were seemingly normal families with seemingly normal kids.

Morgan’s mother, Angie Geyser, shares a chilling moment from Morgan’s childhood, recalling that when they watched Bambi, Morgan reacted without empathy during the pivotal moment when Bambi’s mother dies. “She [Morgan] did not react the way we would have expected a 6-year-old girl to react,” says Angie. This recollection is unnerving, conjuring an image of a small child blinking without reaction to the death of a beloved figure.

Most of the time spent sorting through Morgan’s past is happy—home video clips of her jumping into a raked pile of leaves and beaming after receiving a Kindle for Christmas. All of it could be taken from your childhood, or mine. By digging through layers of their pasts, the audience sees Morgan and Anissa are simply little girls, not evil monsters.

One connecting thread in Beware the Slenderman is heartbreak but the villain, just like Slenderman himself, is all the bits and pieces of lore. Still, the question remains, and Brodsky delves into the mystery around Slenderman, attempting to discover how this figure was able to entrap Anissa and Morgan so completely that they would be willing to kill for him. This power is not wholly unknown, as we are reminded of figures like Jim Jones and Charles Manson. But how does a fictional character wield so much influence?

Anissa, a young awkward girl, had trouble making friends and was treated as an outsider by her classmates. As

Anissa Weier in custody

young teens do in the digital age, she turned to the warm glow of the internet for solace. There, she was able to indulge all of her oddness and self-expression, finding and sharing with others. But one of her fascinations was Slenderman, the modern-day bogeyman of the internet, molding to fit our fears. Dressed in a black suit with white, faceless features, he is the gruesome specter of sites like Creepypasta, Reddit, and 4Chan.

Also seen as a morbid loner, but as a type of guardian angel for children to find solace, Slenderman is often shown stalking and hunting children, lurking in places where children frequent such as playgrounds and parks.

But it’s when Anissa finds Morgan that the curiosity escalates into obsession. A psychiatrist says in the film, “They feed off of each other.”

After spending time learning about Morgan and Anissa’s fairly happy childhoods, the documentary reveals that during her incarceration, psychiatrists diagnosed Morgan with early childhood schizophrenia, which her father also suffers from. We learn Morgan experiences hallucinations and delusions, referring to late night conferences with fictional characters like Severus Snape from the Harry Potter series of books.

Sketch from Morgan Geyser

Morgan’s father, Matt Geyser, also talks about his struggles with schizophrenia, sharing that while he knows certain things are not real, “it smells and tastes and looks real,” to him.

But for Morgan, whose 12-year-old mind is still figuring out the world, these lines are much more blurred. To her, Slenderman on the internet is speaking and communicating directly to her; that is her reality.

This balance of showing the differences is Brodsky’s delicate touch to the film, juxtaposing the normal life of these all-American families with the surreal horror of the online mythos of the Slenderman. Where does that intersection lie and how does the line between reality and normalcy in the life of a pre-teen transform into something that can end in disaster?

As an avid fan of true-crime media, I would recommend this documentary to like-minded viewers. Any listeners of podcasts like Serial and My Favorite Murder, along with viewers of Netflix’s Making a Murderer and HBO’s The Jinx, will be equally fascinated by Beware the Slenderman, and come away with a much greater understanding of how the perfect storm of conditions can end in tragedy.

Morgan Geyser in court

The fact that the real-life event of attempted murder stems from an online mythology is never too far away in Beware the Slenderman. The documentary itself is largely formatted to resemble an Internet search. Brodsky purposefully includes the first part of her Skype interviews (of course all of her subjects struggle to connect properly), as well as the exploration of Slenderman himself on the internet with cursors shown clicking over selected YouTube clips, scrolling through fan art, and through the deep cracks of places like Creepypasta and 4chan.

Now ages 15 and 14, respectively, Anissa and Morgan will be tried as adults, both charged with attempted first-degree murder. They have pleaded not guilty by reason of mental illness or defect. If found guilty, they could serve up to 65 years in prison. Their trial is set to begin spring 2017.

Beware the Slenderman airs on Monday January 23, 10:00 pm ET/PT on HBO.

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Erin Richards-Kunkel

The one with the overly-active imagination! Erin is a fan of all things storytelling in every form (movies, books, shows, podcasts, you name it). She is known for always carrying a book in her bag as well as paper and pen (just in case). She is also currently working on her debut YA novel. Find her on Twitter @ErinSRichards!