News

“I know how it’s going to end now. I’m going inside the video, through the computer, into the screen.” – Casey, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.

“What if I really was someone else? Very far away on the other side of the television screen” – Maddy, I Saw the TV Glow.

A tulpa is a mystical concept that’s rooted in Tibetan Buddhism where an imaginary entity becomes real and gains sentience if enough people validate its existence and give it power. It’s an idea that runs rampant in horror, albeit typically with individuals and monsters, rather than planes of existence. Tulpas always involve fiction being brought into reality once they gain enough agency. Humanity has a natural curiosity and appetite for delusion, whether it’s something like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, or a more sinister idea like Slenderman. However, who’s to...

Morgan Geyser, the Wisconsin woman who nearly stabbed her friend to death to please the online fictional character Slender Man when she was 12, was denied release from a psychiatric hospital Thursday, April 11, The New York Times reports.

A Wisconsin judge ruled that Geyser, now 21, will have to remain at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute despite some doctors saying they believed she was ready to be released under certain conditions. But other medical experts argued against her release, while the Waukesha County assistant district attorney and members of the victim’s...

Hey, "20/20" fans. We're back in your faces to let you know that another episode of 20/20 will be hitting the air tonight, September 1, 2023. However, just like last week, this one will be another repeat episode since the 20/20 crew is still in the offseason at the moment. Some of you guys might not have seen this particular repeat episode. So, we do have some preview intel for it. ABC put out a new press release for tonight's September 1, 2023, repeat episode. So, we will certainly reference it for this preview session. Let's get to it. For starters, we got an official title for tonight's September 1, 2023 repeat episode of 20/20. It's called, "The Wicked." It originally aired way, way back on October 25, 2019. In tonight's September 1, 2023 repeat episode, the 20/20 team took a deep look at a story about a girl named Payton Leutner. When she was just 12 years old, her two...

Prepare to enter the unsettling world of a horrifying attack in “20/20: The Wicked.” This special two-hour episode of “20/20” delves into the chilling account of the violent assault on Payton Leutner, a 12-year-old girl who survived a brutal stabbing by her two friends, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, in Waukesha, Wisconsin. The episode is set to air on Friday, September 1, from 9:01 Pm to 11:00 Pm Edt on ABC.

What Happened to Payton Leutner, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier?

The episode will shed light on the harrowing event that took place. In a disturbing twist, Geyser and Weier stabbed their friend Payton Leutner 19 times and left her for dead in a wooded area. Astonishingly, the attackers were only 12 years old at the time. They claimed that they committed the violent act in a misguided attempt to gain the approval of the fictional character Slender Man.

Leutner managed to crawl...

While HBO Max is undergoing a sea change behind the scenes, the streamer still boasts an impressive catalog of films. Its documentary line up is particularly strong, thanks to partnerships with TCM, the Criterion Collection, and HBO itself, as well as the inclusion of several HBO Max originals. On the service, you'll find everything from groundbreaking classics that defined the genre, like "Nanook of the North," to docuseries that dive into seminal artists and cultural icons, like "George Harrison: Living in the Material World," to investigative films that probe the human condition, like "Mommy Dead and Dearest."

Whether you're looking to learn more about an overlooked moment in history or dive into the dark underbelly of true crime, there's something for every kind of documentary fan on HBO Max. From the countless hours of material to choose from, we've gathered the best documentaries streaming on HBO Max right now.

20 Feet From Stardom...

Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos sent a lengthy missive to the entire company following the mounting controversy around a new original special from comic Dave Chappelle.

After addressing top leadership in a Friday memo, Sarandos sent an email on Monday to all staff — some of whom have increasingly expressed outrage over jokes about the trans community in Chappelle’s “The Closer,” and have scheduled a walkout protest as a response.

“We know that a number of you have been left angry, disappointed and hurt by our decision to put Dave Chappelle’s latest special on Netflix,” Sarandos wrote in an email obtained by Variety.

“With ‘The Closer,’ we understand that the concern is not about offensive-to-some content but titles which could increase real world harm Last year, we heard similar concerns about 365 Days and violence against women. While some employees disagree, we have a strong belief that content on screen doesn...

“Human Centipede” (2009)

Listen … any movie about a deranged doctor stitching three people together, mouth to anus, will cause outrage. The film’s general consensus on Rotten Tomatoes read, “Grotesque, visceral and hard to (ahem) swallow, this surgical horror doesn’t quite earn its stripes because the gross-outs overwhelm and devalue everything else.” It’s just gross.

“Human Centipede 2” (2011)

This sequel continues the grotesque experiment from the first, but also includes graphic rape and sadism. It was so horrifying, in fact, that the British Board of Film Classification deemed it as an infringement of the Obscene Publications Act and was liable to cause real harm to the public, according to The Guardian.

“A Serbian Film” (2010)

This film has been one of the most controversial films of the decade, given it deals with rape, incest, pedophilia, necrophilia and, um, “newborn porn.” According to IGN, the film was investigated for criminality in Serbia and other countries,...

Payton Leutner sleeps with a pair of broken scissors under the pillow next to her, "just in case." Now 17, the Wisconsin girl who was stabbed five years ago by two fellow 12-year-olds, who insisted they only attacked Payton to please Slender Man, sat down this month to speak out publicly for the first time about the traumatic events that shined a big, scary light on the all-too-real consequences of what can happen when impressionable—or unstable—minds come into contact with a fictional story that's taken on a life of its own. Because, obviously, there is no Slender Man—at least, not in the form Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier thought "he"...

Payton Leutner, a 17-year-old Wisconsin girl, made the news five years ago when she was stabbed to near-death by her former best friends, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier. The 12-year-olds were having a sleepover when Leutner’s friends got her out of the house and lured her into a wooded park in Milwaukee. Leutner believed they […]

The post ‘Slender Man’ Victim Payton Leutner Speaks Out For First Time 5 Years After The Attack appeared first on uInterview.

Exclusive: Flay, the feature film that Sony claimed was a rip off of its own Slender Man, is set to finally be released after independent production company Phame Factory and the Hollywood studio resolved their differences.

Last year, Sony served the indie with a cease-and-desist order to stop the release of Flay as it claimed that it was a rip-off of the Slender Man character, which it had the exclusive rights to.

However, Phame Factory filed a lawsuit in July seeking a judgement that its promotion and distribution of Flay didn’t infringe Sony’s copyrights. It has now won the right to release the film and has reached an agreement with Sony, albeit with a disclaimer on advertising materials, trailers and the movie itself.

The film, which is written and produced by Eric Pham, tells the story of a young woman who goes up against a malevolent faceless spirit.

This summer’s latest horror flick, Slender Man, won’t be getting any audiences in a small area of Wisconsin.

The Marcus Corporation, a theater chain in Wisconsin, announced they would not be showing the film in locations in Milwaukee and Waukesha counties, according to Wtmj-tv.

The two areas are near the site where two teen girls brutally stabbed a classmate in 2014 after they claimed the online character Slender Man told them to.

In a statement to the outlet, the company said, “Like many people across the United States, Marcus Theatres was deeply concerned and saddened when the Slender Man...

Morgan Geyser, one of the two teenagers who stabbed their friend 19 times to appease the online character Slender Man, penned a letter to her victim ahead of her sentencing. The letter was read out by the 15-year-old’s mom in an interview with ABC 20/20 as the teenager was sentenced by a judge to spend 40 years in a mental hospital. She had pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder as part of a deal with prosecutors to avoid going to jail. Anissa Weier, 16, with whom she carried out the attack, was sentenced in December when she was ordered to spend...read more...

Hours after stabbing a classmate in the Wisconsin woods, Morgan Geyser sat in a police station with a detective who was trying to determine what had led up to the nearly-deadly assault.

“What were you trying to do with her when you stabbed her?” he asked Geyser, who replied:

“Kill her. I might as well just say it. We were trying to kill her.”

The interrogation is shown in video obtained by ABC News for a Friday night episode of 20/20 that focuses on the case. An exclusive clip of the show is above.

In the preview, Geyser’s mom reacts...

It was just the other day that we shared with you guys the creepy new trailer for director Sylvain White’s upcoming Slender Man movie starring Joey King, Annalise Basso, and Javier Botet. Today the film seems to be gathering up its share of controversy in the form of the father of one of the girls […]

The post Anissa Weier’s Father Believes New Slender Man Film Is Exploiting Tragedy appeared first on Dread Central.

Sony’s “Slender Man” movie is “extremely distasteful” and is capitalizing on tragedy, says the father of one of the girls who stabbed their classmate in an attempt to please the fictional character. In an interview with the Associated Press, Bill Weier, father of Anissa Weier, said he hopes local Wisconsin theaters won’t show the film when it is released in May. “It’s absurd they want to make a movie like this,” Bill Weier said. “It’s popularizing a tragedy is what it’s doing. I’m not surprised but in my opinion it’s extremely distasteful. All...

Sony Pictures is trying to capitalize on a tragedy by releasing a movie starring horror character Slender Man, according to the father of one of two Wisconsin girls who attacked their classmate to please the fictional boogeyman.

Bill Weier, father of Anissa Weier, told the Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday that he hopes local theaters won't show the movie when it is released in May.

"It's absurd they want to make a movie like this," Bill Weier said. "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...

He gets in your head like a virus.

Watch the brand new trailer for Slender Man now. The film stars 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.

Some facts before you see the film:

Victor Surge is the original creator of Slender Man, the mythical Internet character who inspired Wisconsin 12-year-olds Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier to stab their friend in Waukesha woods on Sunday. Surge was the first to make a Photoshopped image of Slender Man, submitting it to a forum called Something Awful (Sa) in 2009. From there, Internet users created backstories and more manipulated images of the character, and it grew...

Update: Bill Weier, the father of Anissa Weier who was one of the two girls at the center of the Slender Man trial, siad that making the movie was in "extreme poor taste" and has asked theatres not to show it, per Associated Press.

An unnerving dread permeates the first trailer for Slender Man, a horror film adaptation of the infamous creepypasta meme that inspired an actual attempted murder. Javier Botet stars as Slender Man in the Screen Gems film, which hits theaters May 18th.

Director Sylvain White (The Losers...

Just like how I didn’t have any idea who Logan Paul was until this season of “Top Chef” and that whole suicide forest fiasco (and I now know enough, thanks), the whole slenderman thing mostly blew by me. Frankly, the meme probably would’ve stayed fairly niche were it not for Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, who stabbed their best friend, as part of a plan to meet the mythical creature (the story was chronicled in the HBO doc “Beware The Slenderman“).

Continue reading ‘Slender Man’ Trailer: Horror Meme Gets Turned Into A Horror Movie at The Playlist.

One of the two Wisconsin girls who dressed as fictional horror character “Slender Man” and attempted to murder one of their classmates in 2014 has been sentenced. Slender Man News: Anissa Weier Sentenced To 25 Years Anissa Weier, 16, was sentenced to 25 years in a mental health facility – the maximum punishment possible for […]

Source: uInterview

The post Slender Man Update: Anissa Weier Sentenced To 25 Years In Mental Health Facility appeared first on uInterview.

One of two Wisconsin teen girls who stabbed a classmate 19 times to appease a fictional Internet bogeyman known as “Slenderman” was sentenced to the maximum 25 years in a psychiatric facility after she was judged not criminally responsible for her actions, according to multiple news reports.

Anissa Weier, 15, avoided jail in the sentence handed down Thursday by Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren, who gave Weier credit for time she’s already spent in detention dating back to the 2014 crime, Fox News reports.

Weir and the second convicted assailant, Morgan Geyser, were both 12 at the time of the attack, as was the victim,...

One of the two Wisconsin girls who stabbed a classmate 19 times to appease the fictional online character “Slenderman” sobbed in court on Thursday as she recounted the 2014 attack during a hearing that ended with the 15-year-old pleading guilty to attempted homicide.

Morgan Geyser was committed to a state mental hospital following Thursday’s plea, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The teen has been receiving treatment at the same state facility for the last two years.

Geyser accepted a plea deal from prosecutors. Under the terms of the deal, she will avoid prison, the paper reports.

In August, Geyser’s co-defendant,...

The second of two Wisconsin girls who stabbed a classmate 19 times – in the name of a fictional Internet horror character known as Slenderman – will avoid prison when she enters a plea of guilty by reason of mental illness, her attorney said.

Morgan Geyser, 15, will enter the plea Thursday to the charge of first-degree intentional homicide. She was scheduled to stand trial before a jury next month, but after her plea there will be no trial, her attorney said.

Earlier this month, Anissa Weier, also 15, pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree homicide as a party to a crime with use of a deadly weapon.

Fifteen-year-old Anissa Weier, one of the two girls charged in the 2014 “Slender Man” stabbings, will be placed in a mental institution until at least 2020 after a Wisconsin jury agreed that she wasn’t criminally responsible due to mental illness. The verdict was reached late Friday night after 10 of the 12 jurors agreed that […]

Source: uInterview

The post Jury Accepts Anissa Weier’s Insanity Plea In ‘Slender Man’ Stabbing appeared first on uInterview.

Anissa Weier, one of two Wisconsin girls who admitted to participating in the stabbing of their classmate in order to impress the creepy fictional character Slender Man, was found mentally ill at the time of the attack and will avoid jail time. The world took notice of Slender Man in 2014, when two pre-teen girls — Weier and Morgan Geyser — lured their classmate Payton Leutner into the woods in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier encouraged her, prosecutors said. The victim barely survived and managed to crawl onto a bike path, where she was discovered...

One of two Wisconsin girls who stabbed a classmate in 2014 — in the name of a fictional Internet horror character known as Slenderman, they later claimed — will avoid prison after a jury determined Friday she was mentally ill at the time of the attack.

Anissa Weier, 15, was found not criminally responsible for her actions in the 2014 stabbing of classmate Payton Leutner, who was found by a passing cyclist on a bike path of a local park, fighting for her life and begging for help.

Leutner had been lured to the park on May 31, 2014, by Weier and fellow classmate Morgan Geyser. Geyser...

One of two Wisconsin girls who stabbed a classmate in 2014 — in the name of a fictional Internet horror character known as Slenderman, they later claimed — made her first appearance in front of a jury on Tuesday.

Sixteen jurors, eight men and eight women, were selected Monday in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, to decide whether 15-year-old Anissa Weier suffered from a mental illness at the time of the attack more than three years ago, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

If a jury finds Anissa was mentally ill, she will go to a state mental hospital and not seek to be released for three years,...

One of the two Wisconsin girls accused of stabbing a classmate 19 times to please the fictional online character “Slenderman” pleaded guilty Monday to a downgraded charge, but will still go to trial next month to determine her mental fitness, People confirms.

Anissa Weier, 15, pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree homicide as a party to a crime with use of a deadly weapon, court officials confirm. She was initially charged with attempted first-degree intentional homicide in the 2014 attack on Payton Leutner, then 12, in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Under the terms of the plea deal, Weier could be sentenced to 10 years in prison if, at...

The second of two suspects accused of attempting to kill their friend three years ago — by luring her into the woods and stabbing her 19 times — appeared in court earlier this week where a Wisconsin judge denied a motion to have a jury from a neighboring county hear the case.

Instead, 15-year-old Anissa Weier will be tried by her peers in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, officials said. Her trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 11.

Earlier this month, the other suspect in the case, 14-year-old Morgan Geyser, appeared in court where a judge determined her confession to police — parts of which were aired...

Nearly three years after Payton Leutner was stabbed 19 times by two classmates when she was 12 years old, the Wisconsin teen is thriving as a high school freshman taking Advanced Placement courses.

“Today, Payton is a strong young woman who is excelling in school and doing many things that a teenager would do with her family and friends,” says family spokesman Steve Lyons.

On Tuesday, the same day Payton turned 15, a Waukesha County judge set a trial date in her case for Oct. 2 and ruled that a confession by suspect Morgan Geyser will be admissible. The judge also ruled there will be no change of venue,...