Oh my lord. Where to start with this one! I am a big fan of found footage, and this had been on my radar for ages, but somehow just never got round to, as a large chunk of time is needed to complete it. And I had really, really high hopes. I have to say, the horror/ supernatural content is minimal. Running though woods, or walking through a derelict building with a body cam is not supernatural, and probably 70% of this is taken up by the aforementioned. Clearly influenced by The Blair Witch movie. I started off being intrigued, but by the end It started annoying me. There is an enormous amount of time where nothing really happens, and most of the characters are not relatable/obnoxious.
Basic story, there is a normal student film being made called Marble Hornets. It all goes south, but one of the guys involved gets all the (or most) of the tapes from the guy producing and starts going through them. He finds more than he bargained for.
I'll start with the, sort of, positives. It is hard to tell if this was an enormous undertaking, with an ending mapped out right from the off, or just made up as they went along. My guess is that the truth lies somewhere between the two.
In total, including the 'totheark' interludes, there are 130 entries in the series, ranging from less than a minute to over 15 minutes in length, around 10 hours in total. So you have to admire the commitment of the film makers if nothing else. The acting is okay to pretty good, I've seen a lot worse in bigger budget movies. The filming is pretty cool, giving an amateurish feeling, while still maintaining good shots and lighting. The story does keep you guessing, and hanging out for the next instalment, and being a fan of all things Slenderman related, pushed this up a star rating for me.
Okay, negatives, and unfortunately, there are a few. The two biggies, at least from my perspective, are as follows.
Someone who has video footage of another person killing/causing grievous harm to another person, but doesn't go to the police? WTF?
The whole timeline is spread out over months, in fact well over a year, if not years, but many of the characters spend their lives living in hotels. They don't appear to work, so how the heck can they afford it? Talking of timelines... particularly during the first half of the run, the timeline is all over the place, and very, very confusing. Multiple times, there are scenes which you later find out are old tapes being reviewed, and predate the existing storyline. And to add to the confusion, a lot of the "recovered tapes" are unlabelled, so played out of order.
In one of the entries, an actor in the Marble Hornets movie comments, and I am paraphrasing here, "It felt like any other artsy student movie. And not a very good one." Hmmm.
Sometimes the "shaky running through the woods" footage gets a bit much, but overall the balance is okay. This is not a series for lovers of constant excitement and action. In the first half there is very little dialogue, and a lot of on screen dialogue to read. However, it does maintain a feeling of suspense. Several thing do not make sense, and there is the usual "Why would they do that?" type moments you get in a lot of horror movies.
There is also a fair amount of repetition, scenes from different characters perspective, and again, sometimes shown in retrospect to add to the confusion. I have to confess, towards the end I got distracted, the horror/ supernatural content is minimal and the storyline deteriorates into a mish mash of fill ins. I do applaud the work put in, but if they had focused more on the supernatural elements, and less on the student angst, it could have been great.
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