3/10
Major Disappointment - Irresponsible and Exploitive
7 March 2022
Warning: Spoilers
I'm very disappointed and surprised HBO would air something this irresponsible. I was hoping this documentary would take the sensationalized story and put it into thoughtful context. Nope. Halfway into the movie there was no longer any journalistic reason to show Slenderman drawings or videos. The decision to continue to titillate with them was because the documentary needed filler - it doesn't have very much information about one of the two girls.

We learn that one of the girls is an undiagnosed schizophrenic. It turns out that she'd probably been symptomatic since she was 3 and had learned how to hide it. Her parents didn't know she had symptoms until she was put in jail for this attempted murder.

This is when I'd expect this documentary to stop talking about Slenderman and get serious. Nope - bring on more homemade Slenderman videos and kids creepy drawings.

The problem is that they don't have much to say about the other girl. There's never a detailed discussion about her motivations. As far as the court is concerned, she's a "normal adult." But she's still a 12-year-old girl who wanted to kill one of her friends and leave her to die.

There's not even a good discussion of schizophrenia. There's a great interview where her dad talks about being schizophrenic and what he lives with daily. He wonders whether his personal symptoms are similar to his daughter's? Because there was so little information about the other girl, this would have been the opportunity to bring in data - percentage of schizophrenics who commit violent crime. What will his daughter's care will be like in prison? More talk about the genetic connection in schizophrenia and what parents can do - and if the answer to that question is nothing, that should be call to action for more funding for mental health care.

It's like a 50/50-coin flip on whether this documentary does more harm than good.
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