‘Slenderman’ Is Coming To HBO, Get Your DVR Ready For Another Crime Show

“Beware the Slenderman” is about to come to HBO, and will join the plethora of popular true crime shows like “Jinx” and “Making a Murderer”—i.e., probably our latest TV addiction.

“Slenderman” will be a documentary, based on the fictional, nightmare-inducing, Internet-born supernatural figure who scares and goes after children and has appeared in various forms of media, including countless memes, fan fiction, and video games.

He became known in 2009, though really known in 2014, after two 12-year-old girls in small-town Waukesha, WI, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, stabbed their friend 19 times… because Slender Man “told” them to. Allegedly, after committing this sacrifice, the girls would earn the right to go live with Slender Man in his mansion in the woods.

Irene Taylor Brodsky, an Academy Award-nominated director, worked with the girls’ families for 18 months to create the HBO doc. In it, Brodsky uses Slender Man as a metaphor on how what we see and hear on the Internet—even make-believe figures like Slender Man—influences real life.

It’s no secret that what kids see online affects their behavior—not always positively—and “Beware the Slenderman” is bound to stir up conversation and debate among its viewers.

Though an HBO air date has not been set, “Beware the Slenderman” will premiere at SXSW on Friday, March 11. A panel, “Down the Rabbit Hole: Slenderman, Children & The Internet,” will take place at the festival on March 13 with Brodsky and one of the girl’s fathers, Bill Weier.