Screen Gems has released the trailer for their upcoming horror film, Slender Man, based on the internet phenomenon that has a self explanatory name but a terrifying visage.
Sylvain White (Stomp the Yard, The Losers) directed the film, starring Joey King, Julia Goldani-Telles, Jaz Sinclair, Annalise Basso, and Javier Botet.
In a small town in Massachusetts, four high school girls perform a ritual in an attempt to debunk the lore of Slender Man. When one of the girls goes mysteriously missing, they begin to suspect that she is, in fact, HIS latest victim.
For the uninitiated, Slender Man (also known as Slenderman) is a fictitious abnormally tall, faceless man with long arms who stalks and abducts children. In 2014, he inspired real-life horror as two 12-year-old American girls in Wisconsin lured a friend into the woods and stabbed her 19 times in an effort to “appease” the fictional entity.
Slenderman was created by Something Awful forums user Eric Knudsen (alias “Victor Surge”) as part of a 2009 Photoshop contest, shown lurking behind children in two black-and-white photos. His mythology expanded and spread, seen alternately as a malevolent figure and a guardian angel, spawning fan fiction, artwork, games, videos and several low-budget feature films. Movies based around the Slenderman myth include Windigo (2011), Hylo (2012), Proxy (2012), Entity (2013) and Always Watching (2015), the latter featuring Doug Jones (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth) as the creature.
Slender Man will open in theaters on May 18.