Film Review: Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story
Gravitas Pictures
(this review contains spoilers)
I’m not sure why I settled on Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story (henceforth, Always Watching…and now that I have Googled ‘Marble Hornets,’ I am trying to not be a dickhead elder millennial) as it’s not normally what I seek out. I’ve only dabbled in YouTube horror, though I’m very curious to see where it goes in time.
Perhaps I was just in the mood for found footage, or simply tired and wanting to flirt with a film that the more embittered parts of my psyche say I am too old for, but I chose a Slender Man movie over a plethora of likely better options. And here’s the truth from the top: it wasn’t that bad.
I can tell you’re all perked for the rest of this review after that winsome opening salvo.
Despite feeling primed to dislike this film from the start, I found things to appreciate–namely that they tried to develop the characters a bit and give them decent histories, emotions, and objectives beyond the usual fleshy-bloody setpieces that found footage characters end up being. There were also some slight creative details that I really appreciated and will delve into a bit later. The pacing was solid, and while it was by no means a great film, it could be just the thing to get you where you want to go with a horror movie if you’re feeling chill and unburdened by expectations.
We kick off with a forgettable sequence where two forgettable people are running from Slender Man in/around a car in the woods. What happens doesn’t matter, because this is the weakest scene in the movie and thankfully it ends very quickly. Seriously, Marble Hornet folks, why did you need to open with a cheap ass kill scene that made your movie look a lot worse than it actually is? I question your taste and judgment, but envy the success of your media empire as compared with my own…
(…I now have to write the rest of this review knowing that The Marble Hornets could, on a whim, make me a thousandaire…)
Then, as if the whole first scene had been an accident, we refocus on a NYE party where people who look way too old to be killed by Slender Man are partying their asses off in ways they will inevitably be unable to do a few short years into the future. Milo, a cameraman–both in this film and as a profession–is introduced, and he has a pleasantly serendipitous bathroom kiss with a stranger named Sara, who will also be with us for much of the journey between this bathroom and wherever it is that the film ends. Sara is a reporter at the same news station where Milo works, and the two will presumably spend a great deal of time together both during and after work going forward.
Somehow, I really doubt that the reporter and the camera guy ever get together in real life…if you have experience to the contrary, please get at me.
Snap forward another scene and we quickly learn that 1) Milo and Sara had a relationship after the NYE party that is now over 2) Milo has an unhealthy habit of stalking and filming Sara, and 3) there’s a new editor figure at their news station named Charlie and he is waaaaay hotter than Milo.
Poor, creepy Milo.
I’m really not sure who we’re supposed to feel sorry for at this point, but fortunately none of it will matter for long.
From there, things escalate quickly as the new boss deploys his crack field reporting team to follow around a job crew tasked with cleaning out foreclosed homes. From there, the script more or less writes itself as the cleaning crew (and thus, their tagalongs Milo-Sara-Charlie) enters an uncharacteristically affluent home and finds a series of weird shit, most notably….Xs and Os drawn overtop of each other. Assuming this symbol is canon to the Slender Man mythology, can whatever forum bros that came up with Slender Man not draw something a little more interesting?
The film glibly points out that it’s more or less the same symbol that the Zodiac Killer used, and we all know he’s a lame piece of shit that guy is/was (seriously, Zodiac is the most shrugworthy of serial killers. The dude used a gun.).
Judgement call: this was not someone’s creative apex
From there, Slender Man ‘attaches’ to the trio and things just escalate and escalate. I don’t think any of it is worth rehashing when I can instead turn to talking about what I liked and didn’t like about the execution of the movie. Trust me, I’ve told you enough about the plot for you to decide if you want to watch it or not.
By far the best moments in the film were the decoys and red herrings scattered about the interiors as the characters look for Slender Man. Atop a desk there would be a posable anatomical statue that effectively looks like a naked version of the ghoul. In another scene there was a glass duck whose round, white head remarkably resembles that of the monster our characters fear. There’s little that I love more than these seemingly conscious hints and triggers in a film, and I wish more found footage directors had the benefit of a distinct and recognized villain with which to work in this sort of thing.
This may sound strange, but I think there are inherent problems with making Slender Man creepy in a film setting. His distinctive white head jumps out of those wide panning shots with no subtlety to speak of.
Gravitas Pictures
For the older folks, this is kind of like if Waldo, instead of his trademark candy-cane hiding suit, instead wore neon. This undermines the fear of seeing something unnatural, as Slender Man is always just kind of there, perhaps not even far away from whatever person is filming him. When he pops so much in a scene, it’s hard to believe he’s stalking us, and this is the core problem with the film’s ability to build dread.
On the positive side, this film uses digital distortions and audio anomalies more effectively than most found footage movies. The distortions are light, and rather than bursts of static, we get short spans where the audio cuts out completely. This is so much better than what others have chosen to do, as it doesn’t leave the reader blind or deafened, struggling for the mute button and ultimately detaching from the thing they sat down to watch. While The Marble Hornets didn’t make a masterpiece, they avoided some common amateur mistakes and for that I applaud them.
My final feeling was one of disappointment, as Slender Man eventually resorts to a brute force psychological attack where he forces the characters to kill themselves/each other. This seems to go against the spirit of the source material, as I always thought Slender Man was more of a slow paced seductor who wore his victims down over time, eventually driving them to a breaking point. Maybe that’s what the creators intended, but what came through to me was discordant.
I’d like to reflect more on Slender Man as a whole, creepypastas, and internet folklore itself, but I think that’s another article, and one not attached to a specific film.
Should you watch this? Sure, so long as you have an interest in Slenderman (it should really be one word; I’m making it one word), enjoy found footage, and aren’t setting the bar terribly high.
Final Verdict: 4/10
Strengths:
Creators tried to make something worthwhile
Better than average characters
Decent scares
Weaknesses
Predictable plot
Doesn’t make the best use of its source material
Stays safely inside the lines, which seems to go against the formula
You might also like: presumably other MH content, Beware the Slenderman
