The internet has revolutionized the ways our culture tells stories, with the legend of the “Slender Man” being one of the first modern-day horror tales that developed as a response to the interconnectedness of social media. Ahead of the first official trailer for the upcoming Slender Man, an all-new poster has debuted, which you can check out below.
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The film was directed by Sylvain White and stars az Sinclair, Joey King, Julia Goldani Telles, Annalise Basso, Alex Fitzalan and Kevin Chapman.
The upcoming movie marks the first film directly based on the entity, despite various documentaries being developed around the subject and other feature films taking loose inspiration from the figure.
The origin of the character came from a Photoshop challenge on the Something Awful forums in which users challenged themselves to take mundane photos and alter them to include a horrifying element. Eric Knudsen, posting as “Victor Surge,” posted two photos of children in which a tall, suited figure appeared in the background with elongated limbs.
The images resonated with other users, as multiple people all began claiming to have similar experiences as a child with this “Slender Man,” ranging from claiming to have seen the figure while they were a child to even having interacted with him, often including extraterrestrial or supernatural abilities of the figure.
The web series Marble Hornets began to play with the mythology, using short videos that often depicted mundane daily activities, with brief glimpses of the figure sporadically popping up throughout the series.
In 2014, two girls became so enamored with the entity that, due to their difficulties distinguishing fact from fiction on the internet, believed that they must offer a sacrifice to Slender Man in order to become one of his “proxies,” which would ensure their safety.
The 12-year-old girls coaxed one of their friends into a park bathroom and repeatedly stabbed her before leaving her there. The young girl survived the ordeal while her attackers were sentenced to mental facilities.
The events of the stabbing were chronicled in the documentary Beware the Slenderman.
Slender Man lands in theaters May 18, 2018.
[H/T IGN]
