Airdate: Beware the Slenderman

HBO documentary Beware the Slenderman will premiere on Foxtel’s showcase later this month.

The two-hour special looks at the infamous case of two Wisconsin girls who lured their classmate in to the woods and stabbed her 19 times, in order to appease a fictional Internet legend called ‘Slenderman’.

Directed and produced by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Irene Taylor Brodsky (The Final Inch), it examines how an urban myth led to dire consequences.

This screened at South by Southwest film festival last March 2016 and was broadcast on HBO in the US last month.

On May 31, 2014 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, a 911 call reported a chilling crime – a girl had been stabbed and left by the side of the road near the woods. The victim, Payton “Bella” Leutner had been brutally stabbed and left for dead. The suspects were her friends Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier. All three were 12 years old.

In separate interrogation rooms, Morgan and Anissa both explained to detectives they were compelled to kill their friend in order to become proxies of Slenderman, a fictional tall man in a black suit with a featureless white face, who first appeared on the Internet as part of a 2009 Photoshop contest and quickly became an online legend. Morgan and Anissa believed he was real and would hurt their families unless they killed Bella.

Due to the premeditated nature of the crime, the two girls were charged as adults with attempted first-degree murder and have spent more than two years incarcerated, their trial date still pending. Morgan and Anissa’s saga has now become part of the Slenderman Internet myth.

Covering all sides of the unusual ongoing case, this extraordinary documentary draws on an eerie array of Slenderman-inspired art, games and self-produced videos, all culled from the Internet, along with feature interviews with psychologists and folklorists, courtroom testimony, interrogation room footage and unprecedented access to the two girls’ families.

Sunday, February 26 at 8.30pm on Showcase.