Marble Hornets

My brother just introduced to the YouTube series Marble Hornets, and I ended up watching the whole thing in one night. The videos are short handy-cam clips that, the story goes, are part of a huge collection of tapes made by film student Alex Kralie. I don't want to spoil the plot, but it's a clever and suspenseful example of low budget film-making.

One of the really cool things about this series is how its creators made use of interconnected YouTube and Twitter profiles to generate a sense of immediacy and authenticity as the episodes unfolded. The Twitter was updated with the 'real time' activities of the main protagonist as he investigated the mystery of the tapes. Along with the main YouTube account, there is also another account which has posted video responses that contribute to the plot and offer coded clues and threatening messages. This profile obviously 'belongs' to another character in the story, but you are never told who.

Here are the first few clips:

[Edit: you can't read the text properly in the intro when it's small, so you need to full-screen it]









The whole thing is mighty creepy, and it just gets worse from here on.

Without giving too much away, this series really explores the relationship between fear, sight, and monstrosity. The harder it is to make out the strange figure, the more horrific it becomes. This is something that is often missing from contemporary films, where representing the grotesque is often understood to be a matter of showing everything in excruciating detail.

I highly recommend checking this series out. But don't blame me if you can't go out in the dark by yourself anymore!