Delayed Reaction: Beware the Slenderman

The Pitch: Is the Slenderman to blame for a girl nearly being killed?

An investigation into the internet's role in a preteen girl nearly being killed by her friends.

HBO is really good at finding weird and interesting crimes to investigate. There'sSomething Wrong with Aunt Diane? is chilling due to how open ended it is. MommyDead and Dearest is unsettling because there's no "side" to take that isn't pretty awful. The Paradise Lost series is a terrific mix of depth of research and time invested. Beware the Slenderman sounded like another great doc. I mean, two girls nearly stab a friend to death because of an internet meme. I need to know more!

It turned out to not be as engaging as I'd hoped. It was half internet cautionary tale and half character-restoration of the girls who committed the crime. Because all the girls are minors, there wasn't much access to them. The victim's family is [understandably] absent and the families of the girls behind the attack are oddly reasonable about it all. The whole thing is pretty civil in that respect. I loved the part at the end when the father is talking about how the younger brother is going to be given a tablet at school. He's like "I think it's an awful idea. I don't like it at all". He immediately follows that by admitting that he's probably in the wrong about that but for understandable reasons. The movie uses schizophrenia as too neat of an explanation for everything. Around that point, you get the feeling that this was being made less for the investigation and more to restore the reputation of the girls behind the crime.

The Slenderman investigation was a bit of a dud as well. I guess the filmmaker gets to the nuts and bolts of "Who is slenderman?", "where did he come from?", and "How did they find out about him?" and tracks down some disturbing bits of the girls' internet search histories. The doc doesn't have anything all that intriguing to say about it though. Kids are impressionable. The internet has some crazy stuff. Loners are especially susceptible. Yawn. The whole thing has the same tone of a story that sounded great as a pitch and didn't have much else upon further investigation.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend