Film

Beware the Slenderman

Beware the Slenderman revisits the 2014 Wisconsin stabbing in which two twelve-year-old girls tried to kill a classmate to appease a fictional internet monster. HBO's documentary moves patiently through courtroom footage, family interviews and the mythology itself, less interested in shock than in how belief, isolation and undiagnosed illness curdled into violence. Careful, unhurried, and genuinely sad rather than sensational — a hard watch for the right reasons.

TMDb rating6.5

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The Act2019

A folie-à-deux between a mother and daughter, dramatised rather than documented — it gets at the same eerie question of two people convincing each other something monstrous is true.

But It's a scripted drama, not a documentary, so the ambiguity you're left with is replaced by a clearer, more theatrical villain.

The Act poster

Capturing the Friedmans2003

The gold standard for documentaries that refuse to tell you what to believe — a family accused, a town convinced, and a filmmaker who lets the contradictions sit exactly as uncomfortably as they should.

But Its central crime is different — abuse allegations, not violence by children — so the parallel is more about method than subject.

Capturing the Friedmans poster

We Need to Talk About Kevin2011

Tilda Swinton is extraordinary as a mother reconstructing, after the fact, the moment her son became capable of atrocity — the same nature-versus-nurture dread, made fictional and operatic.

But It's arty and elliptical rather than procedural, and some will find its style colder than the raw documentary footage they came for.

We Need to Talk About Kevin poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Marble Hornets2009no page yet

It's not inspired by the case — it's the source. This is the fiction that became real to two twelve-year-olds, so watching it is watching the actual seed of the crime.

This is the actual amateur web series that invented the Slender Man mythology the girls were obsessed with — found-footage horror shot on consumer cameras, unnervingly plain and homemade.

But It's low-budget and slow by design, with none of the polish of a documentary, and some episodes test your patience before the dread kicks in.

More like this (7)

Casting JonBenet2017

A formally daring documentary about a child's murder told entirely through actors auditioning to play the people involved — it interrogates our appetite for these stories in a way Slenderman only gestures at.

But It's more about media obsession than the crime itself, and its experimental structure can feel like a puzzle rather than an emotional experience.

Casting JonBenet poster

Mommy Dead and Dearest2017no page yet

Another true story of a child pushed toward violence by forces adults refused to see — here it's medical abuse rather than internet myth, but the slow, sickening reveal lands the same way.

But The abuse at its centre is a very different mechanism of harm, so the through-line is emotional rather than thematic.

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father2008

One of the most devastating documentaries ever made, about a murder's ripple effects on the people left behind — a reminder that these stories don't end when the courtroom does.

But It has nothing to do with children as perpetrators, and its grief is so raw that it's a genuinely hard watch on its own terms.

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father poster

Cropsey2010

A documentary about a local urban legend that became entangled with real disappearances and a real trial — the closest thing to Slenderman's folklore-into-violence structure most people have never heard of.

But It's rougher and less polished than HBO's production, and the case at its centre is messier, with less certainty about what actually happened.

Cropsey poster

The Elephant Man1980

Gus Van Sant's quiet, dread-soaked drama follows ordinary teenagers through an ordinary school day that isn't going to stay ordinary — atmosphere over explanation, exactly like Slenderman's slow-building unease.

But It offers no motive and no comfort, and its detached, observational style will frustrate anyone looking for insight rather than mood.

The Elephant Man poster

The Bad Seed1956

Long before internet folklore, this film established the 'is this child simply bad' panic — the same nature-versus-nurture anxiety, minus the technology.

A pristine, buttoned-up 1950s melodrama about a seemingly perfect little girl who turns out capable of real cruelty — the same unbearable question about whether evil can simply be born, asked decades before anyone had a computer.

But Its moral framing is blunter and more melodramatic than the documentary's careful ambiguity, and its datedness reads as campy to some.

The Bad Seed poster

Thoroughbreds2018

Same psychological engine — two girls talking each other into the unthinkable — reworked as a sleek, blackly comic genre film instead of a courtroom tragedy.

A cold, darkly funny thriller about two teenage girls whose friendship curdles into a shared plan to kill — fiction that nails the specific, isolating logic of folie à deux between adolescent girls.

But Its stylised, deadpan tone is a long way from documentary sobriety, and its ending is far more theatrical than anything that happened in Wisconsin.

Thoroughbreds poster

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