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Title: Beware the Slenderman (2016)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
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Morgan Geyser | ... | Herself - Stabbing Suspect |
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Anissa Weier | ... | Herself - Stabbing Suspect |
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Angie Geyser | ... | Herself - Morgan's Mother |
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Bill Weier | ... | Himself - Anissa's Father |
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Michael O. Bohren | ... | Himself - Judge |
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Michelle Trussoni | ... | Herself - City of Waukesha Police Department |
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Kristi Weier | ... | Herself - Anissa's Mother |
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Payton Leutner | ... | Herself - Stabbing Victim (archive footage) |
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Trevor J. Blank | ... | Himself - Digital Folklorist |
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Brad Kim | ... | Himself - KnowYourMeme.com |
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Richard Dawkins | ... | Himself - Evolutionary Biologist |
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Jack Zipes | ... | Himself - Literary Critic |
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Tom Haynes | ... | Himself - Anissa's Former Teacher |
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Abigail Baird | ... | Herself - Neurodevelopmental Psychologist |
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Tyler | ... | Himself - Former Fellow Inmate |
Lurking in the shadows of the Internet, a faceless modern-day bogeyman has attracted the attention and fear of a young generation who whisper his name online. Slenderman lives on the dark pages of the web, where impressionable youth create and cultivate his mythos in message boards, YouTube clips and various other digital incantations. But the online fairy tale becomes a shocking real-life horror as two 12-year-old girls, guided by their devotion to Slenderman, lure their friend into the woods to attempt a seemingly inexplicable, brutal murder. From the depths of one the Internet's most unsettling creations to the court case that must consider the consequences, Beware the Slenderman brings to light questions of accountability in an age where young, growing minds are only a few clicks away from creating and consuming something that may influence them to commit unspeakable crimes.
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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.