Sunday 10 May 2015

Screener: Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story (2015)

Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story

IMDB rate: 5,7
Genre: Mockumentary, survival
Starring: Alexandra Breckenridge, Doug Jones, Chris Marquette

Last week I posted the trailer of the movie Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story (or from now on: Always Watching), the trailer itself looked interesting to me because of the "Slenderman" type of villain in this movie. Perhaps the trailer itself didn't look to great, but I was definitely intrigued by it.

For those who don't know Slenderman, it's a videogame released a couple of years ago where you need to collect drawings or something while being chased by the Slenderman. The Slenderman is a faceless figure in a suit, quite scary looking. I didn't find the game very scary myself, but I definitely did like the Slenderman because of his creepy appearance.

This movie is not officially about Slenderman, it's actually based on a few YouTube short movies of Marble Hornets which I haven't watched myself yet. But well, there is an undeniable resemblance between the movies villain (called The Operator) and Slenderman. Which I like quite a bit.


Here is what Always Watching is about:
On the hunt for an intriguing news story, a small-town news team follows a crew inspecting repossessed houses. Inside a particularly strange house, the news team discovers a box of video tapes inside a locked closet. Sensing a story, they decide to take them back to their studio. From the tapes, they learn that the family who had lived in the house was not pushed out by the banks, but fled the house in fear for their lives. Trying to decode the story, the crew keeps seeing a faceless figure dressed in a dark suit appear in the footage that causes the videotape to scramble. Their fear mounts when this figure, The Operator as he is deemed, starts to appear in their real lives, standing quietly and watching them. Tortured and terrorized, the three crew members must track down the mystery of The Operator before it's too late.

There's actually quite an interesting bunch of actors in this movie. Doug Jones plays The Operator himself, and while his role isn't too big I must say that he is the perfect choice for this type of villain. Doug Jones is mostly known for his "unrecognizable roles", such as The Silver Surfer in Fantastic 4, as the scary creature in Pan's Labyrinth, as Billie the zombie in Hocus Pocus but my favorite role of him is definitely as "The Gentleman" in my favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Hush".

The main character of Always Watching is Chris Marquette, and even though he isn't extremely famous, he played in a few pretty cool movies such as The Girl Next Door and Fanboys. Chris Marquette did a pretty good job with playing the main character I think. A smaller role is for relatively unknown Alexandra Breckenridge who you may have seen in her role as "the sexy maid" in American Horror Story season 1, she also plays a role in the last season of The Walking Dead. Wasn't too crazy about her acting, but maybe her script just wasn't entirely right for her. She was kinda just put as the pretty girl in this movie, but I think she can do better than that.

As I already said, I love the villain in this movie, this Operator guy. He is scary as hell, but honestly I would have loved to have seen more of him. Especially with the magnificent actor Doug Jones portraying him he just deserves a bigger role in the movie. What I also would've loved to see was more of a background story of this Operator guy. What is his purpose, how is he there, what is he and does he have a weakness? Maybe an interesting approach for a sequel ;).


For a found-footage movie it's a pretty decent movie I think, it pretty much follows the standard found-footage movie principle but overall it's done okay. The movie is not specifically scary, but I must admit that because I was watching this movie with headphones on I got quite tensed sometimes. So here's a quick tip: want a more scary experience while watching horror movies alone? Watch it with headphones on :).

Always Watching is quite a decent movie I think, especially for a found-footage movie who have a reputation about being horrible often. I would've liked it better if the Operator was given a bigger role, because he is of course what's most interesting about this movie, the scenes that he was in were pretty cool though. The dialogue was a bit lame at times and there were a two scenes were the one dude was screaming to the other which was pretty annoying, but overall I actually had quite a good time watching this movie.

My rate: 6/10



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