Marble Hornets

Marble Hornets
Title card
Genre	Horror Thriller Drama
Created by	Joseph DeLage Troy Wagner
Based on	Slender Man
Written by	Joseph DeLage Kirill Baru Tim Sutton Troy Wagner
Directed by	Joseph DeLage Troy Wagner
Starring	Troy Wagner Joseph DeLage Tim Sutton Brian Haight Jessica May
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	132 (list of episodes)
Production
Producer(s)	Joseph DeLage Kirill Baru Troy Wagner
Editor(s)	Troy Wagner
Running time	1-25 minutes
Distributor	Grampo Co.
Release
Original network	YouTube
Original release	June 20, 2009 – June 20, 2014
External links
Website

Marble Hornets (abbreviated MH) is a YouTube web series inspired by the Slender Man online mythos.^[1] The first video was posted on YouTube on June 20, 2009, following a post that its creator, Troy Wagner, created on the Something Awful forum the previous day.^[2]

To date, there are 92 videos on the main channel (87 entries).^[3] The series also has 39 accompanying videos from a side-channel, "totheark". These videos, as well as the eponymous "totheark", have been featured multiple times throughout the story.^[4][5] As of April 8, 2018, the principal channel has over 95 million views.^[6]

On August 3, 2015, a follow-up series titled Clear Lakes 44 was uploaded onto the Marble Hornets channel. As of April 2016, Clear Lakes 44 was cancelled after the members of the creative team went their separate ways, as confirmed by Wagner.^[7] On October 16, 2016, a successor to Clear Lakes 44, titled ECKVA, was launched.^[8] On December 27, 2017, Wagner posted a new photo to his Twitter page, teasing a comic related to Marble Hornets slated for a 2018 release.^[9]

In 2015, a film spinoff Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story was released.

Plot

The series follows Jay Merrick (Troy Wagner), a young man who attempts to find out what happened during the filming of "Marble Hornets", an unfinished student film helmed by Jay's friend, Alex Kralie (Joseph DeLage). Three years before, Alex abruptly ended the project after only two months of production. Before cutting contact with Jay, Alex gave him the tapes containing raw footage from the film and told Jay never to talk about it with him again.

By watching the tapes, Jay discovers that the filming seemed to be hampered by a figure known as "the Operator". The Operator soon begins invading Jay's personal life, inducing him to set up cameras in his apartment. Posting the tapes to YouTube as "Entries" also nets Jay cryptic and threatening responses from a user known as "totheark". Jay's investigation leads him to meet with one of the film's cast members, Tim Wright (Tim Sutton), and sends him to the abandoned house of another cast member, Brian Thomas (Brian Haight), where he has his first encounter with a masked figure. Jay visits a red tower to find a tape that shows Alex leaving his cameraman Seth Wilson (Seth McCay) in an abandoned building when confronted with the Operator and deeming all of the cast and crew of Marble Hornets "gone". Eventually, threats of stalking from totheark causes Jay to flee his apartment, which is subsequently burned down. Jay receives video in the mail of Alex and his girlfriend, Amy Walters (Bethann Williams and Mai Yamane), being attacked by the Operator. As a result, Jay sets out to find Alex.

Seven months later, an amnesiac Jay wakes up in a hotel room and meets with a similarly amnesiac young woman, Jessica Locke (Jessica May), who subsequently disappears. He unlocks a safe containing videos and a hard drive revealing the events that transpired during the previous seven months.

The footage shows that, during the missing seven months, Jay had a run-in with Alex, which saw them forming an alliance to find Amy. Jay also learned that the masked figure was Tim, who cooperated with a mysterious hooded figure to attempt to kill Alex. Having been driven insane by the terror of the Operator and suspicious of Jay spying on him, Alex killed a stranger whose body was then taken by the Operator. The videos also reveal that Jessica was Amy's friend and roommate, who, when contacted by Jay in his investigation, was unintentionally dragged into the case. When Alex attempted to kill Jay and Jessica for their involvement, the two escaped with the help of Tim and booked rooms at the aforementioned hotel, where the Operator erased their memories.

With no leads in finding either Alex or Amy, Jay enlists Tim under the pretense of finishing Marble Hornets. While Tim is initially furious upon learning about Jay's true motives, he decides to continue assisting him. It is revealed that Tim does not remember anything he has done while in his "masked" state, that he was formerly committed to a mental hospital due to hallucinations that he fears were caused by the Operator, and that his new medication is able to block him from switching to his "masked" state. Tim and Jay's investigation leads them to repeatedly encounter the Operator, who subjects them both to physical and psychological torment. Jay begins to experience hallucinations. The hooded figure steals Tim's medication.

Tim is revealed to have hidden a video showing that he and the hooded figure are the ones responsible for Jessica's disappearance and subsequent encounter with Alex and the Operator. This revelation leads Jay to stop working with Tim. Jay shows up at Tim's house with a knife and zip-ties, but he is overpowered, tied up, and eventually freed by the hooded figure. Tim and Jay set off to find Alex separately. When Jay is killed by Alex and his body is taken by the Operator, Tim carries on by himself. Tim eventually learns that the hooded figure is Brian, shortly after Tim sees him fall to his death. During Tim's final confrontation with Alex, Alex reveals that he wants to kill anyone who has encountered the Operator; he claims that, in addition to Jay, he has already killed Amy, Seth, and Sarah, and he plans to then kill Tim and then himself. In the ensuing struggle, Tim finally manages to kill Alex by stabbing him in the throat. The Operator then appears and leaves with Alex's body.

Four days after, Tim reunites with Jessica, whose location Tim has kept hidden before this point. Tim's final encounter with Jessica ends ambiguously; Tim lapses into a coughing fit as the camera distorts and then cuts to black. When the footage resumes, Tim is alone, driving away and stopping at an intersection while sirens can be heard in the distance. The final image of the series is a text card that simply states "Everything is fine."

Characters

• Troy Wagner as Jay Merrick: A friend of Alex back in college, Jay begins uploading the entries in an attempt to discover exactly what happened during the filming of Marble Hornets. He is fatally wounded by Alex in Entry #80.
• Joseph DeLage as Alex Kralie: The director of the original Marble Hornets student film project and the focus of Season 1. Alex used to attend the same school as Jay, but transferred to a different one. A large portion of Season 1 consists of tapes he filmed for personal use and for his uncompleted student film Marble Hornets. He is fatally wounded by Tim in Entry #86.
• Tim Sutton as Timothy Wright/The Masked Man: A former actor from the Marble Hornets student film. He makes several appearances in the Entries and on the totheark channel wearing a mask; the identity of this masked man was not revealed until Entry 35. He eventually takes over the Marble Hornets channel from Entry 80 until the series' conclusion.
• totheark: An anonymous figure who makes cryptic video responses to the Entries throughout the series. Their identity is never revealed throughout the series and it is entirely possible that it could be a group of people, as opposed to an individual. The most likely possibility of this is Brian, Tim, and Seth.
• Brian Haight as Brian Thomas/The Hooded Man: Brian was the main actor in Alex Kralie's project, and was assaulted by Alex, later returning as a mysterious hooded figure who works against Alex. He is killed by Tim in Entry #83.
• Jessica May as Jessica Locke: A woman who Jay meets in the second season and is somehow connected to Alex and the Operator, as well as being the roommate and friend of Alex's girlfriend Amy.
• The Operator: An entity of unknown origin. Begins appearing to Alex during the shooting of Marble Hornets. When Jay personally investigates Alex's disappearance, he starts to encounter the Operator too.
• Bethann Williams as Amy Walters: Alex's girlfriend, introduced in Entry #26. She is confirmed to be dead by Alex in Entry #86.
• Seth McCay as Seth Wilson: the cameraman for Alex's film, Marble Hornets. Alex leads him to the Operator at the abandoned building in Entry #22. He is confirmed to have been killed by Alex.
• Mary Kathleen Bishop as Sarah Reid: an actress from Marble Hornets. She appears in front of the camera only once. Alex confirms that he killed her in Entry #86.

Episodes

Development and reception

Wagner and DeLage began working on the webseries after reading about the Slender Man mythos and because both liked the ease of creating a YouTube series.^[10] The initial budget for the series was about $500, which the two used to create the first 26 episodes.^[10] They decided against making a set time for each entry, as they both determined that the characters filming the entries would not consider the length of the episode and that the random entry times would help add to the realism. The entire series is edited with the software Sony Vegas Pro and Adobe Premiere.^[11]

After its release the series' popularity grew,^[12] drawing comparisons to Lonelygirl15 and Connect with I.^[13] In 2013, Dread Central named Marble Hornets one of their "Top 10 Horror Fan Films", noting that while it "isn’t technically a film" it still contained an "interwoven examination of the mythical Slender Man" and that they felt it was "what quality fanfare and found footage is really all about."^[14] Early during the airing of season 1, the series received praise from Roger Ebert.^[15]

In May 2014, the developers launched a Kickstarter campaign to raising funds for the DVD release of the third season. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with the original goal of $8000 in donations being exceeded by $76,271.^[16] These funds went towards further projects, including a box set and new supplementary material in the form of scenes from Alex Kralie's Marble Hornets.

Film adaptation

In February 2013, Variety announced that plans were underway to produce a film adaptation of Marble Hornets.^[17] They also announced that the script would be written by Ian Shorr, that James Moran would direct, and that Doug Jones would be portraying the Operator in the film.^[18][19] In October of the same year, Wagner announced on his blog that the movie had finished filming and it would not be a continuation of the YouTube series but would be set within the same universe.^[20]

The film, titled Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story, was released on video on demand on April 7, 2015, starring Doug Jones, Alexandra Breckenridge, and Alexandra Holden. The film opened in select theaters on May 15, 2015.^[21] Critical reception for Always Watching was predominantly negative.^[22]

References

External links

• Official website
• Marble Hornets on IMDb
• Marble Hornets (film) on IMDb