Marble Hornets: A Study in Amateur Perfection

 Also Known As: Local boy rambles about Marble Hornets. (No one is asking him to do so.)

Many artistic fields paint creators as distant, occasionally misguided, visionaries. The pursuit of the auteur can harm the heart of a piece of work, burying human connection in “vision.” A natural combattent to this occurrence is found in indie, often low-budget, occasionally student, films. Pieces of art made simply by a group of people coming together to create something. The accessibility of the internet has made this occurrence all the more common, with solo creators such as Kane Parsons, Alex Kister, and many others making massive waves in online content communities. However, the genre currently known as “analog horror” has its roots in student films, glitchy camcorders, and internet-wide mysteries. Marble Hornets is a perfect example of the joining of genre-definers in the realm of digital horror, such as The Blair Witch Project, with the homemade style of early 2000s home video. 

The roughly ten-hour series was created by Troy Wagner and Joseph DeLage during the summer of 2009, inspired by the days-old “Slender Man” images posted by Eric Knudsen on the Something Awful forums. The series follows Jay, a film student picking through tapes taken by his peer and friend Alex Kralie in the production of his student film “Marble Hornets.” During production, it seems that Alex began to be followed by a strange, imposing figure, resulting in rash, paranoid behavior and the eventual disbanding of the project entirely. Now, years later, Jay begins to piece together what may have happened to his friend, reigniting a mystery that, by all accounts, should’ve stayed forgotten.

Marble Hornets is a story about community, creativity, anxiety, and loss, told through the lens of creators that, minus the evident hauntings and behavioral anomalies, aren't too different from the characters they’re depicting. A student film about a student film is already a fantastic start, but the characters within the series are both confident and vulnerable, amateur and versed. Jay is an unreliable narrator, Alex is a violent but misguidedly well-meaning antagonist, and the eventual inclusion of Tim, a previous actor on the project, incorporates a struggle between empathy and human nature regarding a force much bigger than can be controlled. The Operator, this series’ name for the internet’s “Slender Man” is a force of nature rather than a direct villain, rarely moving, never speaking, and almost always obscured by static or distortion. It serves as a perfect antagonist in a series that requires innovation as opposed to copious visual effects or digital editing. 

Found footage may seem an obvious medium for a lower-budget project, but Marble Hornets utilizes it in a way that, in a post-Blair Witch Project landscape, still feels both grounded and fresh. In the resulting “Slender Verse,” or the various series that spawned off the success and achievability of Marble Hornets in the early 2010s, many series hit the same mark, but some don’t. It’s a balancing act of reality, comedy, and innovation that some series can certainly survive without, but Wagner and DeLage’s achievements with the spearhead of the “analog horror” genre should not go unrecognized. To begin the series with minimal present-day content in favor of recalling back to old tapes, then to transition to nail-biting recency as Jay morphs into the same paranoid voyeur that he criticized his former director of being creates a fascinating parallel, and one that certainly becomes all the more anxiety-inducing on repeated viewing.

Creating a project such as this series has been the dream of so many individuals, both before and after DeLage and Wagner, but part of the reason Marble Hornets made waves the way it did was due to its realism. Series coming in the wake of it, affectionately known as “the Slender Verse,” captured this spirit in various ways, but did not surpass the unique way Marble Hornets broke out. It is difficult to detail the ripple effects this series had across fan spaces, especially in reference to its supernatural antagonist, but some of its strongest lasting influences are well-known. They took a character present in photos alone and turned it into a terrifying force of nature, which was soon adopted by communities worldwide. Slender Man was suddenly a villain, with set abilities and influences, as seen in resulting projects such as the “Slender” games, which took direct inspiration from the series. But before the video games and poorly constructed spinoff film, Marble Hornets was a low-budget series made by a couple of friends who took an idea and ran with it, eventually creating a world of their own.

The success of this original series isn’t simply in its originality, but in the manner of its presentation. The characters within have chemistry, not only due to their writing, but due to the community of the actors. Resulting series such as EverymanHYBRID certainly bring more joke and banter to the genre, but the reality of Marble Hornets’ heart shines through. Tim, a character who seems to be consistently battling suffering and adversity, remains compassionate and empathetic to the end, despite his gruff exterior. When confronted with an impossible adversity and the villainization of those he knew the best, he continues to fight for both their humanity and his own. As Jay becomes more cynical, and Alex more villainous, Tim’s good intentions and heart give the audience something to hold on to.

        Marble Hornets succeeded in the way it did due to its circumstance in a budding internet community, but also due to its core, forged in the collaboration of a few college students who had a story to tell and were passionate about doing so. There are almost too many points of innovation worth their own elaboration, but the start of each have been referenced. The series is truly something special for many reasons, and will continue to be so as more and more pieces of content cite it as inspiration. Joseph DeLage and Troy Wagner broke ground for internet series and pieces of student creativity in ways that are still visible to this day, and with the resurgence of “Slender Verse” content in 2024, supported by Alex Hera’s documentary series, more and more people have understanding of and access to these pieces of work. It is the hope of any creator to have their work take on a life of its own, and it would be difficult to argue that Marble Hornets did anything but shine. For students, for creatives, and for a couple thousand nerds online, it continues to be groundbreaking and comfortably real. A piece of art that feels both conceivable and revolutionary, Marble Hornets will remain a slice of history as well as one of the truest examples of amateur perfection.