According to Deadline, Lifetime has announced its slate of fall movies, and one of them is about two 12-year-old girls who become obsessed with a scary story they read on the internet involving a monster that lives in a palace in the woods and tries to lure children to their deaths. If any of that sounds familiar, it shouldn’t. This has a nothing to do with the famous “creepypasta” monster The Slender Man, as the villain in this TV movie is called The Suzerain. Plus, in real life, two young girls in Wisconsin tried to stab their friend to death because they thought it would appease the fictional monster, but in Terror In The Woods—as Lifetime’s movie is called—two young girls in Georgia try to stab their friend to death because they think it will appease the fictional monster. See? Totally different stories.
For real, though, this is a straight-up “ripped from the headlines” drama, as the story goes on after the brutal attack and continues to mirror what happened in real life. The girl that got attacked survives (like in real life), but as the police investigate this terrible incident, discussions come up about whether or not anyone can really blame the internet for inspiring it. The girls were tried as adults in real life, which is and was very fucked up, but maybe Lifetime’s version will take the opportunity to address the mental health issues that probably drove the attack in the first place (since they were tragically sidelined in the real case).
Anyway, Angela Kinsey is in this, so maybe she’ll distract us from thinking about how tasteless this may or may not be.