The Imaginary Monster that Inspired a Real Murder Attempt: New at Reason

'Beware the Slenderman'Kids these days! Remember the good old days when the worst trouble a mischievous child could get into was maybe joining a killer sex cult or blowing herself up in a Greenwich Village bomb factory? Well, television this week is full of evidence that Dennis the Menace has left the building, probably armed with a hatchet and a pocket full of strap-ons.

Actually, HBO’s documentary Beware the Slenderman doesn’t deserve such a flippant introduction. It’s a serious—and seriously disturbing—piece of work about a pair of 12-year-old Wisconsin girls who, inspired by a creepy internet meme, lured a friend into the woods after a birthday party and stabbed her 19 times. That she survived was no fault of theirs.

The news of that 2014 attack on 12-year-old Payton Leutner by her supposed friends Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier was, for most American grown-ups, the first word they’d heard of Slenderman, a lanky, faceless character who for the past five years had been haunting Internet chatboards and campfire-story sites. Television critic Glenn Garvin explains more and also checks out CW’s incarnation of Archie and his crew in Riverdale.

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