Horror Movies Banned For Being Too Disturbing

A number of horror movies have been inspired by actual events, but it's relatively rare for Hollywood to pursue a tragic story that's only recently been in the headlines — and the outrage that greeted 2018's Slender Man serves as a fine example of why. 

Inspired by the online horror phenomenon that rose out of so-called "creepypasta" works, the film tells the story of a group of teenage girls intent on debunking the legend of a dark, mysterious creature... only to fall under his sinister spell. It's a tale that's all too familiar to a group of Wisconsin parents whose daughters were all affected by the Slender Man meme: in 2014, 12-year-olds Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier made headlines for repeatedly stabbing a friend, Payton Leutne, in a ritual designed to appease the fictional creature.

Long before the resulting court case was anywhere near its conclusion, Sony backed a Slender Man movie — and its road to theaters was predictably rocky, with studio drama, release delays, and copyright battles threatening to derail the project even as parents of the girls involved in the (thankfully non-fatal) incident tried to shame the movie out of theaters. "In my opinion it's extremely distasteful," Weier's father told the New York Post. "All we're doing is extending the pain all three of these families have gone through."

None of it was enough to stop Slender Man's inexorable march to cineplexes, but multiple theaters in the area where the attack took place took the extraordinary yet understandable step of banning the picture prior to its premiere. In January 2018, the Avalon Theater and Fox Bay Cinema Grill — both roughly 20 miles from the scene of the crime in Waukesha — announced they wouldn't be screening Slender Man, with Fox Bay owner Roman Kelly telling reporters that it would be "hitting a little too close to home."

They were joined in early August — just prior to Slender Man's theatrical debut on the 10th — by the Marcus Theatres chain, which decided to ban the movie from locations in Milwaukee and Waukesha counties "out of respect for those who were impacted." For those outside the county line (or willing to do a little extra driving), however, screenings still proceeded as planned. Turns out you really can't stop the Slender Man.