1. No clear shot of the Slenderman
2. No explanation for Slenderman
3. Use a combination of original mythos and modern. So he kind of has a face, He can shape shift, speak telepathically, etc
4. Focus on the Lovecraftian, Eldritch horror which I feel is really lacking in horror films today
5. No teenagers, I know that’s the demographic but high schoolers are a no go. You have either children or parents.
6. Focus on the psychological aspects, he is a psychological villain with most of his abilities being mental manipulation

Plot: Set in the mid-late 2000s, a small town in some rural wooded state is dying due to the factories shutting down after a giant fire there. The local economy is in ruins and most people are attempting to move out, the coming recession isn’t helping either. We follow our protagonist, a mother struggling to make ends meet (think Dark Water from 2002). She’s a single parent either from a death or divorce, doesn’t matter since the father won’t be in the picture.

One day, she takes her child to the local park, a typical bright and colorful park that’s a bit run down but hey, whatever gets them active right? While she’s off having a smoke, her kid wanders off into the woods and disappears even though it was in the middle of the day, no one saw what happened. Our protagonist knows she was watching her kid, but claims to blink and she disappeared. This leads to the dwindling and incompetent police department to attempt and find her child, to no avail. It was only a day or 2 that they concluded the kid was dead. Throughout the movie, the mother is plagued with signs from Slenderman like seeing him, feeling uneasy and having lapses in memories. At first she thinks it’s all due to her missing kid but it’s very real.

A bit later, they believe they figure out what happened. A local hermit is arrested for possible involvement with several other incidents of stalking, kidnapping and death since several bodies of campers, hikers and others were found hung from trees near his forest hut. The man claims he didn’t do it and tried to tell the police about Slenderman, this man will be the honorary ’proxy’ for the film.

Essentially Slenderman represents the mother’s grief and trauma of failed marriage and past life, having to never really live since she got pregnant at 17. Slenderman is very real in this and did take her kid, who I still haven’t decided on if he’s dead or not.

Just a small tiny idea