In 2014, Morgan Geyser,12 and Anissa Weier, 12 attended a party and sleepover at Morgan’s house with their friend Payton “Bella” Leuter, 12. The next day, Morgan and Anissa walked Payton into the woods where Morgan stabbed the girl 19 times. The act was premeditated. The girls planned it for awhile, hoping to appease Slenderman, a tall faceless man that preys upon children. They claimed that in order to keep him away from their families and for them to be in his presence, they needed/wanted to become a proxy or a servant/apprentice for Slender, so they’d have to kill their friend. After the stabbing, Morgan and Anissa were found by police, walking down the highway towards Slenderman’s mansion in Nicolet National Park, a two hour drive from where they were in Waukesha, Wisconsin. They were picked up and taken to the police station where they told the story of how and why they decided to try and kill their friend.

Beware the Slenderman, directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky, premiered on HBO on Monday, January 23rd. The long awaited documentary was a hit at Sundance and when HBO decided to bring it their network, I was counting down the days when it would be available for watch. The Slenderman case is something that you never thought you’d hear about, but probably have in the past. This documentary takes place over 16 months after the stabbing happened. Beware the Slenderman asks the questions, What would make two 12 year old girls stab their best friend? What was going on with them? What kind of mindset develops that allows you to think that’s okay, especially to appease a fictional character? Before we dive into this documentary, I’d like to tell you guys that there will be spoilers cause… oh man, there’s so much ground to cover. So… proceed with caution.

The documentary dives into a couple of important points and we’ll take them all one by one. A couple of them however, include the mental state of both of the girls, the character of Slenderman himself and the blur of reality and fantasy in young children. We’ll start with the character of Slenderman.

Slenderman was created in 2009 by Erik Knudsen, who went by the name Victor Surge. He entered into a photoshop contest to make something that looked real, but wasn’t. He created Slenderman, tall mysterious like figure that stalks children. This story then landed on Creepypasta Wiki, which contain a bunch of horror stories that get copies and pasted. Trevor J. Blank, Ph.D and digital folklorist says that, “Slenderman is open to a lot of interpretation and projection because he is faceless and a boogeyman.” So as soon as this story landed on creepypasta, the meme took life, spreading itself out from person to person and then you see the true power. The story of Slenderman has had its own take by different people. They have been taken on, added to or broken apart for the pleasure of the audience, but more so for the person who takes it on. Blank goes on to say, “Slenderman is the Grim Reaper, but with a heart.” He talks about most of the photos with Slender in then, he never really goes after any child. He’s hidden in the background, almost protectively. It leaves one to think that Slenderman isn’t the monster that people make him out to be, but a protective of some sort for people who really troubled or trying to find their way. Abigail Baird, Ph.D, neurodevelopmental psychologist, says that Slenderman is an “open-ended monster, who will embrace you.” It really sucks being a kid and it sucks even more being a kid and not knowing where you fit in the world. Stories like this, and others, provide an outlet for some kind of non-judgmental relief that you don’t have in real life. An interesting comparison for Slenderman was made by Jack Zipes, Ph.D, literary critic, who compared this story to one like The Pied Piper and Brothers Grimm stories that he says dealt with “human struggles.” He found that this is probably what allows people to live with the story of Slenderman and create their own versions.

What made this so interesting to the girls though? How did they even come across it? What were they like before all this?

Angie Geyser, Morgan’s Mum

Irene interviews all four of the parents for this documentary. Morgan’s parents, Angie and Matt Geyser and Bill and Kristi Weier, Anissa’s parents, were all very much asking themselves the same questions of “Why did they do this?” Bill and Kristi Weier seem like the type of parents that never let any secrets fly by in their houses. Bill is a stern father but protective and it shows. He wants the best for his children and so does Kristi. They separated in 2012 and raise both Anissa and her brother. Kristi’s regret is getting her Anissa her own iPad saying that she spend a lot of alone time in her room with it. She would watch, “things that were funny to her, or depressing or emotionally degrading.” They show some of the videos that Anissa had commented it. They ranged from cute fluffy videos, animated scary things and a cat killing a mouse. It was a wide range, but nothing too alarming. She even watched videos to find out if she was a sociopath or a psychopath.  Angie and Matt Geyser are loving parents as well. Angie recorded all of Morgan’s movements via camera and camcorder for most of her life, wanting to document every moment, which is so sweet. Matt is a wonderful dad as well. In Morgan’s case, the thing that always struck Angie was how Morgan reacted to certain things like Bambi because she didn’t at all seem concerned when the mother died, which she was worried about, but she was worried about Bambi getting out of the line of fire. They both have a lot in common as parents, but so separate in how they raised their daughters.

Neither parent thought that something like this would happen. Anissa was the one who introduced Morgan to Slenderman, feeding something inside both of the girls that they long missed and didn’t have in their life. Morgan marched to the beat of her own drum, not caring what other kids thought of her, while Anissa was bullied by her peers. Richard Dawkin’s makes an excellent point in what may have happened to the girls upon hearing the Slenderman stories and then being so close to each other. He says it was “peer to peer horizontal transmission”, meaning that this meme went from one girl to the other and that set them both captivated in this story. Jacqueline Woolley, Ph. D, psychologist, says that since they believed it together, together caused them both to make an even stronger belief. Feeding into their blur of what’s reality and what’s fantasy for the both of them.

That was the part I found incredibly interesting in the entire case. I think we all can say that we’ve had that blur between fantasy and reality before. Even if you haven’t, you might have thought something was real. Hell, I believed that Patty, a ghost boxer from a show called One Step Beyond, was going to come and kill me in the night. The legend was that if you saw Patty, then you’d die. My dad needed to tell me that that story was only for boxers to help me sleep at night. The blur between fantasy and reality are so slim. It’s so fractured for anyone, even as an adult, sometimes it’s hard to see between it, but with these girls… it’s understandable how they didn’t see it. Belief was so strong in them that they just knew it had to be real, that’s also… understandable to me.

Slenderman was like their guardian angel. Remember what Blank said? “Slenderman is the Grim Reaper, but with a heart.” The stories that carry out after the original paint Slenderman as this person who will take you in with open arms just as Baird said before. These girls were aiming to be proxies for him. They were aiming to be apart of the apprenticeship that Slenderman would protect, so he wouldn’t hurt their families and friends. This was the reality for them, but Woolley makes another good point in the documentary, arguing that the concept of what’s real and what’s not is so blurred that technology is not helping the case at all. Hope R, a supporter of Morgan Geyser, believed that Slenderman existed “with every fiber of her being.” It’s not hard to see that these girls seriously believed that they needed to do this to their friend, especially when you talk about mental states.

Towards the ending of the film, they said that Anissa had no mental illness, she had no psychopathic or sociopathic tendencies, but I think if you watch, you can almost argue something else. However, Morgan suffered from a range. Morgan was diagnosed in the courtroom with schizophrenia, oppositional defiant disorder and bronchial asthma. Morgan also says that she suffered from hallucinations as early as three years old and tried to tell her parents. Her grandparents backed her claim, so did all the psychs on the stand who visited her in the jail. She also directly in the line of schizophrenia because her dad Matt has it as well. Anissa feeding the belief of Slenderman to Morgan was going to cause some type of damage in the long run. It’s a sad and tragic case, but if you stop to look at all the cause and effects of what’s happening inside of their lives. The strong belief of Slenderman and the mentality of the girls kinda break down to the point of it being the only thing they’d want to do.

Another very much interesting that I’d like to talk about is the fact that these girls became legends after this stabbing. It’s kind of a weird thing to mention, but hear me out. Slenderman is already a legend, he is a well known creepypasta from across the land, but in a way, the girls got to be the proxy’s they so desired to become? There’s fan art for these girls with Slenderman comforting them and welcoming them into his arms. There’s support and more for the girls way after the fact. It’s almost like, they didn’t get to go to Slenderman’s mansion, but they still get the “glory” of doing something in his name.

Verdict:
See It!
 It’s absolutely horrible what they decided to do, but watching Beware the Slenderman really helps you understand when and how that line was blurred for them. It helps you understand that you have to look out, be aware and notice the little things. Beware the Slenderman is overall a very sympathetic and brilliant triumph of a documentary. Irene Taylor Brodsky did an amazing job with getting these experts together to take their side of this intense but important case together. Her view remains a bit muddy, leaving you with a sense that she feels sympathy for the girls, but also knowing that she feels just as much sympathy for the victim as well.

Insha Fitzpatrick
ifitzpatri@gmail.com
co-editor in chief of dis/member & rogues portal. hufflepuff. frmly of geek.com. talks on film runners. craves horror films. loves true crime. tries her best.

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