Junior year of high school was when I started learning about the expansive world of creepypasta, and Marble Hornets started that plunge. My friend of many years introduced it to me after she and two other people kept making constant references during our lunch period. And let me tell you, I was hooked after watching the 3 minute introduction video. There wasn’t even music or audio — just white text over some landscape shots. That was enough to get me addicted.
Marble Hornets is a web show that was created by three college students around the time where the creepypasta Slender Man was starting to gain popularity on different online forums. They were the first to bring this creature from photos to video, and that’s when the creepypasta (and the show) really took off. At the time I started watching, they had just released the last episode of the entire series, so it was great timing on my part — I got to enjoy seeing the series end along with other longtime fans that had waited five years for the conclusion.
Marble Hornets is the only real horror I’ve watched. I’ve tried playing horror games and watching Let’s Plays, but I always get too scared and have to stop. This show had me so invested in what was at stake for the characters that I fought through my anxiety in order to continue watching. I think what makes this series really dynamic and effective was how they portray the Operator and the use of the found footage style.
In the show, they don’t refer to Slender Man as such because they were doing their own spin on the creepypasta and didn’t want the two associated, so they called this being “The Operator.” What makes this show scary and anxiety-inducing is that they rarely show the character on screen. You get hints of his presence, whether it be a passing shadow, seeing him through a window, or creeping around a corner, but there are only a few times where he is clearly shown. Most of the time he’s barely seen, often acting as the “puppet master” and manipulating other characters to do his bidding. Going back to why this is horrifying, we never know when the Operator is going to appear. He comes in at completely random times, and even a slight shadow is enough to show his presence. And since the audience never knows when he’s going to make an appearance, either fully in frame or just peeking his head out around a corner, it builds tension.
The found footage style of filming was, I think, a perfect choice for this web series. We see everything from the character’s perspective and we essentially experience whatever they’re feeling. Much like the characters, we don’t know what’s coming or what to expect and we as an audience feel vulnerable. Most of the time, the characters aren’t carrying weapons, so it’s not like they can attack if need be. Found footage is probably the easiest way to make an audience connect with a character because it feels like you’re behind the camera with them, experiencing the scene for the first time. While watching the show, I had to stop every other minute in order to feel grounded and remind myself that the Operator was not going to come out of the screen and attack me. Even going back and watching it over again, it is still scary, and for the makers of the show, that’s a fantastic thing to accomplish.
Marble Hornets may be lost to time since its release back in 2009, but it is, in my opinion, a great addition to the horror genre. It really captured the found footage style, and the writers did a fantastic job of using that genre to their advantage to pull off the effects needed and the reactions from the audience. It also helped boost the popularity of Slender Man, which can be taken as a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. In the end, I think Marble Hornets should be a must-watch for horror fans due to how it captures the anxiety of something watching you from behind every corner.