In 2014, in an attempt to appease a
fictional character named The
Slenderman, twelve-year-olds
Morgan
Geyser and
Anissa Weier lured their friend
Payton Leutner into the
Wisconsin woods and stabbed her repeatedly.
First surfacing on the humour website
Something Awful in 2009, Slenderman has become the Internet’s
biggest urban legend, inspiring short films, art and online fiction.
Though the doc's title may suggest that this documentary is an
exploration of the Slenderman myth, it's really more of a true crime
investigation. Brodsky had already begun work on a documentary that
investigated how the Internet affects how we view the world when the
story broke, so that explains how she managed to be there filming
those involved in the case almost immediately after the incident.
The most chilling parts of the
documentary are the videotaped confessions of Geyser and Weier. I say
confessions even though at some points they were speaking to
detectives as nonchalantly as if they were ordering coffee at
Starbucks. It was legitimately shocking to see how divorced from
reality they were. Somehow, they had worked it into their heads that to become the Slenderman's “proxies”, they
had to kill their friend. If they didn’t, he would come after them
and their families.
There's another frustrating angle
to this case, in how law enforcement initially handled things. During
their first few hours in police custody, the parents still thought
their children were missing and interviews were conducted in complete
secrecy. I mean, how is it possible that a twelve-year-old can be
interrogated without some sort of counsel present?
I've been ingesting a lot of stories
about people trying to prove their innocence recently (Making A
Murderer, Serial) so it was a eye-opener to see the other side of the
scale. Though, regardless of the obvious guilt in this case, you
still have to ask yourself how something like this happens. I know
Geyser and Weier parents are. Brodsky talks to them a lot (the victim and her family declined to be interviewed for the doc)
and I feel for them. They were not neglectful parents. In fact, all
signs point to them providing perfectly stable environments.
Brodsky describes the circumstances as
a “perfect storm.” They were two impressionable kids that together created
a kind of psychological dead zone. Judging from their testimonies
of the hours leading up to the incident, it almost seems like neither
wanted to actually go through with, but neither would back down.
It’s all very tragic. Ultimately, the real victim here is
Payton Leutner. She was stabbed nineteen times, but still managed to
survive. She’ll have to live with the trauma her entire life, one
that by some miracle she still has.
Beware the Slenderman illicited several
responses, but chief among them is sadness. Lives have been forever
changed. The detrimental effects of our increasingly connected society is a discussion for another day, but it was an
undeniable factor here. Beware indeed.
