Marble Hornets: Prologue to episode 11 review

Based on the fearsome and immensely popular Slenderman meme, Marble Hornets is a collection of episodic content that can be found on Youtube. The backstory behind the series is relatively simple, film student Alex gives up his raw footage of his project to J before its completed, citing ‘unworkable conditions’ on the set, despite being in within close proximity to his home. J uploads this footage to Youtube, and we’re thrown into a thoroughly unnerving series concerning an entity known only as ‘The Operator’.

The prologue starts innocuously enough, featuring footage from a car journey interspersed with text from J, explaining the story about how he came into possession of the tapes, as well as Alex leaving school. It sets the tone perfectly, and the episodes are paced sufficiently in order to keep interest. What's great is that some episodes are out of chronological order, and its satisfying to see events unfold from a different perspective.

While E1 gives us a fleeting glimpse of the mysterious tall man, the next few uploads show Alex behaving strangely, as well as eerie visual and audio distortions. While these initially seem like imperfections from filming, they have sinister light shone on them around E5. E6 and E7 feature more sightings although the latter gives the audience a bit too much of a good look at our strange stalker.

The remaining episodes continue to show Alex’s erratic and aggressive behaviour that culminates with a restrained yet horrifying payoff in E11. Aside from some unexpected intentional audio distortion, Marble Hornets doesn’t resort to cheap scare tactics; but would much rather subject its audience to a slow burning build-up. This tension does get a chilling payoff every few episodes, but in a way that possesses a great deal of control. Marble Hornets doesn’t want to startle you with cheap, jumpy scares. Instead, it would much rather get under your skin and play on your mind, and it succeeds for the most part. If these 12 episodes are any indication, fans of true fear are in for a treat.

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