Four years ago, after I grew tired of playing “Roller Coaster Tycoon 4”, I went on IGN and stumbled upon a new game titled “Slenderman”. Little did I know, people on the internet weren’t kidding at all when they said that this is one of the best horror games of all time.
I freaked out so bad that I immediately chucked my laptop when the tall, faceless figure appeared on my screen.
And now, Sony is giving life to Mr. Slender by releasing a film titled “Slender Man”, which highlights how a shapeshifting, digital monster can affect a young mind.
The film is set for release this May, nearly four years after two incidents of preteens committing bizarre acts of violence and claiming that the infamous ghost made them do it.
In June 2014, two 12-year-old girls stabbed a close friend in a Wisconsin forest and left her for her dead, and a 13-year-old girl in Ohio attacked her mother with a knife.
The incidents sparked conversation and controversy around the internet’s affects on still-developing brains and how it might warp reality, and stand as a watershed moment in internet culture history. Their families claim that the movie is trying to capitalise on such horrific tragedies.
Unfortunately, from the looks of the trailer, director White is turning the myth into a much more traditional horror movie, with plenty of shots of wriggling bugs and some body horror for good measure.
That’s all very well, but it’s not what makes Slender Man so unsettling — a computer game from 2012 that is at once very simple and completely, utterly terrifying, and I hope the film takes a more psychological approach than what we see here.
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