Slender Man's Second Trailer Lures You Deep Into The Woods

The second trailer for Sony's theatrical Slender Man movie has arrived, but be careful — you can't unsee it.

After just barely suggesting the presence of the spectral Slender Man in a poster and first trailer, the second look at the Slender Man movie is serving up all the money shots. You want tendrils? We got tendrils. You want encounters in the woods and home invasions? We got that, too. Only thing that's missing is a frantic search for the eight pages. 

In a somewhat controversial move, the Slender Man movie  — or at least, the trailer — appears to be invoking quite a bit from the notorious real-life Slender Man stabbing in Waukesha, Wisconsin, which took place in 2014. While the movie isn't recreating that crime story exactly, it does suggest a grab bag of the same elements went into the creation of the movie's story, which follows a group of restless Massachusetts schoolgirls as they go on a deep dive into Slender Man mythology for the sake of locating their missing friend Katie. Do they find the mystic Slender Man? Or do they simply lose their minds in a shared delusion caused by too much Snapchat, YouTube, and Funyuns?

Though the Slender Man mythology has become increasingly elaborate and storied over the years through crowdsourcing, the character was originally created by Eric Knudsen, who posted the creation in a paranormal images thread on the Something Awful Forums in 2009.

Slender Man is directed by Sylvain White, working from a script by David Birke. Originally scheduled to be released earlier in the spring, the movie will be released in theaters on August 24.