Slender Man Movie Trailer Brings the Urban Myth to the Big Screen

The Slender Man movie trailer has arrived, offering a first look at the feature film adaptation of the spooky internet meme and urban legend. Slender Man originated as an creepypasta meme created in 2009 by Eric Knudsen (aka. Victor Surge), who envisioned the monster as a very tall and very lanky figure with a featureless face, a black suit, and a habit of kidnapping and/or otherwise traumatizing children in particular. The 2017 HBO documentary Beware the Slenderman examines a highly publicized incident in 2014 where a 12 year old girl was nearly stabbed to death in connection to the eponymous monster, but the Slender Man film is the first fictionalized cinematic narrative based around the character.

Bringing the Slender Man to life in the movie is Javier Botet, the actor known for playing monstrous creatures and/or figures in such films as [Rec] and Mama, as well as last year’s Alien: Covenant, The Mummy, and IT. Botet is also playing one of the main monsters in this week’s Insidious: The Last Key and portrayed a Slender Man-esque monster known as The Crooked Man in The Conjuring 2. Joey King, who costarred in the original Conjuring, shares the screen with Botet in Slender Man as a young woman who attempts to uncover the truth about a series of disappearances linked to the title character.

Slender Man was written for the big screen by David Birke (Elle) and directed by Sylvain White of Stomp the Yard fame. White hasn’t called the shots on a feature-length film since his comic book adaptation The Losers in 2010, having since then directed for TV shows like Person of Interest, Hawaii Five-O, Lethal Weapon, and The Americans, to name but a few. Slender Man isn’t White’s first time playing in the supernatural horror genre either, with the director having previously tackled episodes of The Originals and Sleepy Hollow for the small screen.

Sony and Screen Gems have scheduled Slender Man to hit theaters in the middle of May this year, just a couple weeks after Avengers: Infinity War arrives in the U.S. and one week before Solo: A Star Wars Story hits the scene. The idea is clearly for the scare-driven Slender Man to serve as counter programming to those big budget blockbuster events, but the date also indicates that studio heads feel that White’s movie is good enough to duke it out with those tentpole heavyweights. If Slender Man’s online popularity translates to the box office, then the horror film may even prove to be the beginning of a brand new franchise.