{"id":12200,"date":"2015-09-09T22:32:56","date_gmt":"2015-09-10T02:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=12200"},"modified":"2015-09-09T22:45:19","modified_gmt":"2015-09-10T02:45:19","slug":"dvd-always-watching-a-marble-hornets-story-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=12200","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Always Watching – A Marble Hornets Story (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\"AlwaysWatching\"<\/a>Film<\/strong>: Good<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0Excellent<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>: n\/a<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong> Anchor Bay<\/a><\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a01 (NTSC)<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0 August 4, 2015<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0 Horror<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0A local news trio become cursed with The Operator, a recurring stalker who can enter and exit any home, yet be seen only through the lens of a video camera.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0 (none)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Preamble<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back in 2009, a contest challenged members of an internet forum to create \u201cparanormal characters\u201d from photos of \u201cordinary\u201d people. The character with an enduring legacy was The Slender Man<\/a>, created by Eric Knudsen (under nom de plume Victor Surge), whose design \u2013 a tall, slender figure dressed in a suit with an obfuscated or a virtually faceless head \u2013 and name is redolent of The Tall Man, a somewhat similarly weird character from the Phantasm<\/strong> franchise in which an old \u2018tall man\u2019 (played with gusto by Angus Scrimm, who has a cheeky cameo in Always Watching<\/strong>) terrorizes kids and travels through inter-dimensional portals.<\/p>\n

Reportedly within a little more than a week after Slender Man\u2019s internet debut, Troy Wagner and Joseph DeLage started posting the first of a 26 episode web series<\/a> on YouTube in a variation on The Blair Witch Project<\/strong> (1999) \u2013 found footage that\u2019s assessed, assembled, and distilled into short narrative bursts that gradually reveal the fates of those recorded on a batch of videotapes.<\/p>\n

SPOILER ALERT<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The finale reveals the video camera used to record the images is the curse’s trigger mechanism: whoever begins to use it is destined to die, much in the way the viewing of a videotape in Ringu<\/strong> (1998) and The Ring<\/strong> (2002) results in similarly doomed characters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

END OF SPOILER<\/p>\n

Like the twiggy humanoid form found hanging from a tree in Blair Witch<\/strong>, Wagner and DeLage also integrated folk-like symbolism in their episodes, consisting of a crude doll effigy of Slender Man found in a cursed house, and a drawn symbol of a circle with a large \u201cX\u201d that symbolizes (presumably) Slender Man\u2019s sightings and \/ or where the accursed was compelled to leave a symbol of his supernatural oppressor during a state of increased paranoia.<\/p>\n

In the web series, film student Jay acquires a bag of miniDV tapes from classmate Alex, containing both footage of an aborted film titled \u201cMarble Hornets\u201d and Alex\u2019s own paranoid self-filming in which he obsessively catalogued his quest to find the slender figure that appears in some of the footage \u2013 always watching, always silent, and seemingly able to enter and leave locked domiciles like a ghost.<\/p>\n

After forgetting about the tapes, Jay begins to sift through the undated, unmarked mass of footage and starts posting online sections of what he finds curious, as though compelling watchers on YouTube to share in the mystery and offer explanations for the increasingly weird minutia that lies on the tapes.<\/p>\n

Like Blair Witch<\/strong>, Troy discovers the fate of his friend, but the series ends with a decision to search deeper, thereby ensuring the Marble Hornets concept would evolve through subsequent seasons (lasting, thus far, three).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Feature Film<\/strong><\/p>\n

With each of the roughly 1-7 minute YouTube \u201centries\u201d earning 1.5 million hits (the intro segment alone has reached almost 4 million hits), it\u2019s clear Wagner and DeLage\u2019s concept has enough legs to evolve into a feature film franchise (and why not, since Ringu<\/strong> spawned sequels and prequels of variable quality, The Ring<\/strong> an abysmal sequel, and Blair Witch<\/strong> an inept sequel).<\/p>\n

Always Watching<\/strong> debuted on VOD and DVD, and while Anchor Bay\u2019s disc is a bare bones edition \u2013 perhaps a decision to treat the film like a disc version of collated footage \u2013 the film does share many of the web series\u2019 attributes.<\/p>\n

Instead of a film school student sifting through tapes, the script by Ian Shorr (Splinter<\/a><\/strong>) substitutes a newly assembled local news crew \u2013 cameraman (Chris Marquette), hot reporter (Alexandra Breckenridge), and station producer (Jake McDorman) – who make use of old videos found in the home of a family that defaulted on mortgage payments and simply abandoned their swanky suburban home in an instant.<\/p>\n

Director James Moran allows the story to unfold in similar short video bursts which calm down into longer clips from a wider array of video cameras, but the concept remains the same in telling the story through footage, except that what we\u2019re seeing is (presumably) someone\u2019s edit of the footage, much like the sci-fi thrillers Europa Report<\/a> <\/strong>(2013) or Apollo 18<\/a> <\/strong>(2011), although like those two films, the greater scope of coverage occasionally oversteps the format\u2019s rules, allowing us to see a bit more than we should.<\/p>\n

As a found footage thriller, Always Watching<\/strong> has its genuine shocks, and like the web series, a banal urban location becomes chilling by being bathed in nighttime darkness, whether it\u2019s the cellar, upstairs bedroom, or a hotel room. Unlike the web series, Slender Man (renamed The Operator for the fledgling film franchise) can only be seen through a camera lens \u2013 the naked eye is unaware of his presence \u2013 and while the figure does enter and exit with ease, he also teases his victims by hovering close as they sleep.<\/p>\n

The web and film directors realized low light, subtle sounds, and milking the ambiance of a creepy place are worthy substitutes for graphic gore, especially when it involves dank abandoned places. The web series made excellent use of suburban decay \u2013 the house where Alex lived has fallen into complete inner ruin, and there\u2019s an old stadium that\u2019s especially eerie \u2013 whereas the film balances decay with a road trip in the second half where the three characters seek out the family who filmed their gradual descent into madness.<\/p>\n

A new addition to the mythos \u2013 besides being seen only through a camera\u2019s lens \u2013 is the circle-and-X mark he literally brands on his next victims like a perpetually raw burn, victims acting our Slender Man\u2019s malevolent desires; and the cameraman\u2019s immediate obsession to record his life, which doesn\u2019t really make much sense given he\u2019s already filming himself before<\/em> the group finds the trove of videotapes.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also an affair, aspects of jealousy, and the road trip that prolong the ending which is similar to the first season of the web series. The best components are the cameraman\u2019s house, which at night becomes a world of rooms and doors from which sounds, shadows, and bad vibes echo. The heavy use of video cameras is also a little reminiscent of soundman Harry Caul, who obsessively records everything around himself in The Conversation <\/strong>(1974), perhaps the seminal film in which an obsessive compulsive\u2019s paranoid behaviour is extended through a brilliant yet self-destructive use of technology.<\/p>\n

Both the web series and the feature film are instant snapshots of pop culture paranoia, feeding off each other and the immediacy of viral entertainment while cataloguing the fears suburbanites have of themselves, their lives, and the technology that saves but ultimately dooms them to a looped, never-ending curse.<\/p>\n

The dialogue is rather wobbly, and the narrative becomes more conventional because unlike the web series, there\u2019s too much<\/em> video coverage, resulting in a more linear denouement that runs contrary to the web series disjointed structure. Nevertheless, Wagner and DeLage\u2019s Marble Hornets series has the ingredients to succeed as periodic film installments if its future makers are determined to avoid easy genre clich\u00e9s.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2015 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a> \u00a0— \u00a0Marble Hornets web series on YouTube<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in 2009, a contest challenged members of an internet forum to create \u201cparanormal characters\u201d from photos of \u201cordinary\u201d people. The character with an enduring legacy was The Slender Man, created by Eric Knudsen (under nom de plume Victor Surge), whose design \u2013 a tall, slender figure dressed in a suite with an obfuscated or virtually faceless head…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[3927,3932,3935,3928,3929,3930,3934,3931,3933],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-3aM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12200"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12200"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12213,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12200\/revisions\/12213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}