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| An image of the contemporary internet boogeyman Slenderman |
Documentaries are not objective, and they do not really try to be. They have a message and an agenda, and part of the pleasure of watching them is discerning how effectively that particular point-of-view is conveyed. That's why Irene Taylor Brodsky's
Beware the Slenderman (2016) confused me in some ways. One of the reasons the line for the film at the 2016 Fantasia Film Festival snaked all the way around the building was that the Slenderman is truly a terrifying visual creation, and many of us just wanted to be shaken up by this elongated, faceless boogeyman. The fact that the documentary explores the real life attempted murder performed by two twelve year old girls helps draw us in all the more.
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| Beware the Slenderman focuses mostly on courtroom drama | | | | |
Yet the compelling figure of the Slenderman frequently takes a backseat to the courtroom and family dramas that clearly drove Taylor Brodsky to delve deeper into the creature's phenomenon, and in many ways, the film is a thoughtful true crime drama. Certainly, this film sympathizes with Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser's parents, rather than demonizing them or coating them with a hefty dose of blame. Still, what motivates these two young outliers to commit this heinous act against one of Morgan's BEST FRIENDS seems muddy, even after nearly 2 hours of exploration. Are these girls misanthropes? Were they bullied? Did the internet compel them to kill? Were either of them mentally ill? That last question seems to be the one on which the filmmaker focuses most explicitly, and while her look at this facet of the case certainly shifts one's perspective, suddenly the film seems like it should be called
Beware of Schizophrenia.
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| Just not enough of this scary-long armed ghoul! |
I think the biggest issue with
Beware the Slenderman is that there's just not enough Slenderman. I came to the screening to be scared by a boogeyman, but instead left thinking the doc is a cautionary tale about internet access for impressionable minds. No Ipads in schools! The scenes showing Anissa's younger brother completely enraptured by a cute, but rather sinister video game where some quacking bird ends up burnt to a crisp while he chuckles and snorts made me really glad that I'm both OLDish and do not have children. Scary though, the film is not (unless you have an internet savvy preteen at home). This doc is definitely worth a look, but you might want to wait until it debuts on HBO in the near future.
