Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story (2015)

Not familiar with the Marble Hornets web series, I took a chance on "Always Watching," not particularly expecting much. It's my personal opinion that probably 80 of horror flicks are just plain bad, but I was pleasantly surprised by this one, as the story is good, the acting commendable and directing very adept.My main beef was that, like so many horror movies, the characters have this "we can't go to the cops, they'll never believe us" mentality. This is sorta explained away when one of the earlier victims went to law enforcement and was pretty much laughed out of the police station with his story. However, later in the movie, the three main characters have plenty of video evidence and still didn't seek help from the authorities. I think that if they had, the story still could've proceeded just fine, and the entire premise would've been more believable.I'm more than willing to find more movies by this director

I am a huge Marble Hornets fan and this was nothing like it. It was like reading the Percy Jackson books before seeing the movies... this is just my opinion though and i'm not hating on the makers or the movie its just not what i expected i guess. And if you like the movie that good for you i guess. I was also really confused because the names of the characters i didn't recognize and i know most of their names. (Alex, Jay, Tim/Masky, Brian/hoodie, Seth, the Operator and Jessica) if i missed any other characters i blame it on my really short term memory. So if your a MH fan and you are thinking about watching it then don't. If you want to check it out for yourself then go head but I didn't in joy the movie.

No intentional spoilers.A little backstory: Marble Hornets is the name of a YouTube channel with found footage "episodes" based around the Slenderman mythos. The YouTube series felt like a student film or just a hobby project, but I found it entertaining and interesting. This movie, if I understand right, is based on that series but not a part of it. I don't see mention of the creators of the YouTube channel as a part of this project, but it felt very similar in experience.The premise was decent: A figure with a featureless face wearing a black suit can only be seen using a camera and follows people. Weird and bad things happen. Beyond that, there's no real meat to the story and it's not nearly as scary as it could be. The acting was not bad at all. I was pleasantly surprised by the performances. For a found footage based film, I think they did a great job of editing it down so you didn't get too bored watching it. I did get tired of the scenes where the characters were just yelling at each other, though. My biggest complaint were the Slenderman related scenes. The original, incredibly low budget YouTube series looked better and felt scarier! That being the bulk of the reason for and entertainment value of the movie, it's unacceptable that it was so poorly done. I could get past it because I like these kinds of stories and movies, but I don't think a lot of people will be as forgiving. It's basically a monster movie where the monster takes a backseat which is why I think fans of the Slenderman mythos and horror movies in general may be disappointed in this movie. I think people who like the Paranormal Activity movies will get some entertainment out of this, but if that's not your thing, this movie probably isn't for you.

Apparently "Marble Hornets" the long-feature film is based on a series that can only be seen on You Tube. Personally I didn't know this series existed… No wait, let me rephrase that, personally I didn't even know there existed series that can only be seen on You Tube! Anyways, the series revolves on a fictional character referred to as Slender Man – although for legal reasons here re-baptized into 'The Operator' – who is a type of boogeyman-for-the-cyber-generation and appears in sinister internet videos rather than underneath your bed. The bad news, however, is that "Marble Hornets" is also one of those dreadful Found-Footage horror movies, which means that the hand-held camera-work is horrendous (and, no, it's not adding any atmosphere or suspense), the characters are underdeveloped and over- the-top hysterical most of the time and that the film ends suddenly and abrupt without any type of proper explanation. Sara and Milo are a not-so professional duo of news reporters, sharing a brief but uncomfortably awkward love history, are following around a team of evictors for a human-interest documentary. They enter a rather nice and well-decorated middle-class family house where the residents cleared rushed out of unforeseen and in a hurry. They stumble upon a pile of family videos and discover that the father became gradually paranoid – and righteously so – because he always spotted a sinister figure observing his family from a distance. This perpetrator can only be seen through the lens of a camera and pretty soon he's also stalking Sara, Milo and their obnoxious supervisor Charlie. If you disregard the connection with the Internet series, "Marble Hornets: The Operator" is an incredibly mundane and forgettable movie. The only remotely interesting added value in the script is the unhealthy relationship between the lead protagonists. For example, Sara and Charlie learn about the existence of The Operator when they stumble upon Milo's private videos in which he's stalking Sara. Both the appearance and the background story of The Operator aren't very interesting or scary, and he honestly doesn't do a whole lot apart from discretely standing in the background. If there ever was a movie that is suitable for Found-Footage fanatics only, it must be this one.