Marble Hornets

This entry isn't about books, but it is about a bit of great writing, so I'm thinking it counts. Every great movie starts as a screenplay, every screenplay had to be written by a human-being-- Some of whom are more clever than others. Now I hardly take my nose out of books long enough to notice what's happening in the world around me, so maybe you've already heard of the Marble Hornets; that's highly probable as the movie's got over 1 million followers. Which makes me feel so silly for not hearing about it sooner.

But for anyone who doesn't know what Marble Hornets is, let me tell you. It's a movie/webisode series on YouTube, based on the horror monster known as  "The Slenderman".

And for those who've never heard of The Slenderman, he is the product of a horror-buff-forum-thread where users were invited to create their own monsters. Someone submitted two black and white photos of children, altered to have a tall, ominous, faceless, suit wearing figure with tentacle arms hovering in the background. The story-line behind the monster, explains that he stalks his victims, who are often children,  and may or may not have killed the photographers unlucky enough to capture him on film.

Now if you're not a horror fan, the Marble Hornets might not be for you. But if you're an American Horror Story fan, and your jonesing for something creepy to fill the void until Season 4, you'll probably love this. The story follows a character named Jay as he searches for answers about his friend Alex. Alex was a film student, working on a project called Marble Hornets, but over the course of filming he began to have a mental breakdown and ordered Jay to destroy the film. Jay didn't. Alex disappeared, Jay put the footage out of mind. After rediscovering the footage, Jay decides to watch the videos and find out why Alex went crazy in the first place. And I'm sure if you're a fan of horror, you can easily guess no good is going to come from asking questions.

This story is addicting. My threshold for horror is low; I like the idea of supernatural phenomena but every time I press play my mind becomes a mantra of, "I don't want to know, I need to know, I don't want to know, I need to know..." My nose is six inches from the screen and my fingers a gripping the arms of my chair. I'm the person that DVRs shows like American Horror and The Walking Dead, so I can watch them in the morning light, when the monsters can't get to me....

But I have to acknowledge genius when I see it. First my hats off to the person who created the monster in the first place. Then a round of applause for the mad man who wrote the chilling webisode series. I use mad man as a compliment here, because all the horror movie trailers I've seen have been about ghosts, demonic possession, or serial killers on spree. Nobody's really working to make new monsters anymore, and don't you sort of wish they would? And as if the brain behind the web-series wasn't impressive enough, he went and created a second channel, called "totheark", where an unknown character posts coded messages in response to Jay's discoveries. If the creator of Marble Hornets and the creator of The Slenderman got together, I have a feeling they'd own the horror market in no time at all. As it is, I've seen rumors that someone has bought the rights to Marble Hornets and a movie is on its way. And if that's true, I'll probably rent it at home, so I can watch it with the lights on...But I will watch it, and that's the important bit.

If you haven't seen it and you want to here's the Marble Hornets YouTube Channel. This is the companion channel totheark YouTube Channel. If you have seen it, please no spoilers I'm only at Entry 25 and I've got along way to go...