Movies
‘Slender Man’ Spawns Controversy as One Father Calls it “Extremely Distasteful”
The trailer for this year’s film hit yesterday. And it’s already ruffling feathers.
Releasing May 18, director Sylvain White’s Slender Man is the first big horror movie centered on the titular internet phenomenon, created in 2009 as a Creepypasta meme. Depicted as “a thin, unnaturally tall man with a featureless head and face, wearing a black suit,” Slender Man is said to stalk, abduct and kill children.
The fictional character made headlines in 2014 when a 12-year-old Wisconsin girl was repeatedly stabbed by two other 12-year-old girls, both of whom claimed that Slender Man made them do it; Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser stabbed Payton Leutner 19 times, nearly killing her.
So then, is the Screen Gems film based on the 2009 Creepypasta or more directly inspired by that 2014 stabbing? Bill Weier, the father of attacker Anissa Weier, feels that the film is exploiting the 2014 tragedy, and he’s hoping theaters will make the decision to not play it.
“It’s absurd they want to make a movie like this,” the concerned father told the Associated Press this week. “It’s popularizing a tragedy is what it’s doing. I’m not surprised, but in my opinion it’s extremely distasteful. All we’re doing is extending the pain all three of these families have gone through.”
Of course, it’s impossible to know at this point whether the film sticks closer to the original Creepypasta or the tragic real-life story from 2014, but the fact remains that the Slender Man came around five years before Payton Leutner was attacked. So is the film truly exploiting a tragedy, or merely bringing a popular internet meme to life?
We’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to sound off below.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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