Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story (2015)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

As Good As It Gets

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

it's Slendy. Slenderman. I can't take it seriously because of that.that was basically my whole review, but if I had to add more to that, it's that it's basically all about a cameraguy for a local news outlet being stalked by Slenderman after finding videos from a vacant house of a family being stalked by Slenderman.Slenderman was/is a genius concept from its origin of a few photoshopped pictures with some simple backstory. Even the original game made years later was genius in its simplicity.this is just a flat, straight-forward telling of Slenderman made by some fans (not the original creator) without ever using the possibly copyrighted name. They don't do anything new with it or anything particularly innovative or different to make it worthwhile.Even the usual jumpscares that tend to get all people by being startling didn't work on me because every time I see it I grin goofily and say "Slendy", as if he were my buddy

I give this Film a 2, just because I'm a massive fan of the 'Mable Hornets' web series ~ So it gets the first point for that alone, and, I give the extra point for Doug Jones' involvement with it (He's one of Hollywood's most underrated Stars, IMO). But that's it.This Movie bears none of the originality, nor sinister foreboding contained within the outstanding 'Marble Hornets' web series. It's just very standard, bland, mediocre horror fare, that focuses way too much on God-awful jump scares, and not enough on creating actual paranoia based fear and eerie tension like the brilliant 'Marble Hornets' series did by the Fleet-load.And our Slender Man/Operator has been shrunk down to the size of a regular Guy, who looks like He's had a hankie thrown over His face, who's only shown in pathetic static little blips. What a waste of the aforementioned awesome Doug Jones. You'd think that a Feature-length Movie featuring 'Slender Man'/'The Operator' would create a much more substantial monster than the one delivered here.When a 0 budget monster, in a web series, is infinitely more terrifying than the one served up in a Movie ~ You know that Movie has failed on all fronts.Go marathon 'Marble Hornets' right from the 'Introduction' video, and see how this sh*t is meant to be done! (Best viewed at Night, curtains open, with very hot black Coffee)

Positives: Fast forwarding. Negatives: 1. Opening credits Anchor Bay distributors, known for cheap. 2. More shaky camera - I thought that technique had run its course and died years ago. 3. Journalist investigates foreclosed or abandoned homes to show what people leave behind. Boring except of course there's one house that the inhabitants seem to have vanished. Well, that plot has been done many times. And, to borrow further there is the customary box of video tapes that our journalist (and, of course, tag-along camera man) get to investigate for clues. At least that goes a small way toward explaining why there's a camera following everyone around. 4. Now for the supposedly scary part - there are a few times (mostly toward the end of course) of three or so seconds (much longer and you'll break out laughing) where some guy with a piece of cloth over his head (see photo) stands in the background. That's it. Well, someone dies (gee, who would have guessed) but it's a pretty nondescript death. 5. End of story. Not scary unless you're six. Recent alternative, if looking for someone dying, is "Faults" - a bit more intelligent.

Always Watching is another addition to the preponderance of found footage movies within the horror genre. I was getting tired of this gimmick a good number of years ago, but it obviously isn't going anywhere...and when it works it actually does end up leading to some worthwhile movies. This one is a bit of a loose take on the internet-created Slenderman trope, arguably the first entirely crowd sourced urban legend. The antagonist is referred to as The Operator rather than Slenderman, though the parallels are transparent. In this movie the antagonist only shows up on camera and a news crew working on a story about a family that disappeared happens across home videos that they are scouring for any information regarding the disappearance. The cameraman begins experiencing some encounters that have him (and his coworkers) questioning his sanity and he begins taking his video camera with him everywhere he goes. Though the human naked eye doesn't seem to he capable of seeing The Operator, the camera man's dog seems to see it just fine. I won't bother with drawing any correlations between this movie and the Marble Hornets' short films, because there isn't really a whole hell of a lot that actually connects them beyond the use of the name The Operator in place of Slenderman. There isn't anything new or really inspired in this movie to set it apart from other found footage titles, though it does have some good tense moments and a few decent jump scares. If you're looking for a creepier, more unnerving Slenderman experience, I would recommend playing the video game Slender: The Arrival, which has both a better atmosphere and more effective jump scares (in addition to being interactive, which is quite a bit more immersive). The movie isn't horrible, and the acting is pretty good for the sort of low budget found footage movie it is...so it isn't a waste of time to watch. But if you are looking for something that might be actually scary or really interesting I would recommend waiting for the upcoming CreepyPasta movie directed by Clive Barker. I suspect that his treatment of the Slenderman story will be be far superior.