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YMMV / Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story

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  • Broken Base: While the film is pretty good and liked, a lot of fans see it inferior to Marble Hornets itself, as well as the likability of Sarah and Charlie. The fact that Joseph and Troy note  weren't given the opportunity to write the screenplay doesn't help.
  • Complete Monster: This take on the Operator is more malevolent than its original counterpart, being portrayed as a supernatural Serial Killer, rather than a living malignant virus. The Operator would possess people to kill their loved ones, using a Calling Card to taunt and mark future victims. The Operator has a man kill his girlfriend, before stalking a family. Slowly revealing itself to the family, they flee across the country to escape it, before Operator possesses the father into smothering his daughter before trying to kill his wife. When she kills him in self-defense, she tries to suicidally burn the house down, but survives and is left broken. The Operator begins a news crew investigating the family's disappearance. When they try to avoid it, the Operator kills Milo's beloved dog out of spite. Thinking it'll stop the Operator, Milo commits suicide, but the Operator to possess his corpse to kill his friends before throwing its puppet aside.
  • Moral Event Horizon: The Operator influencing the father into killing her own daughter.
  • Nightmare Fuel: It's a Marble Hornets film, obviously.
    • Each time the camera glitches out and shows The Operator standing right there is unnerving.
    • The ending, that fucking ending. Milo kills himself, believing that, since he got everyone else involved with the Operator, his death will cause everything to go back to normal. When he dies, his body gets back up and kills Sarah and Charlie.
    • The main characters decide to turn the cameras off, believing that the Operator will have no power if he can't be seen. The Operator proceeds to kill Milo's dog in the middle of the night.
    • The Operator in general is a totally malignant, unstoppable and sadistic monster whose MO is stalking and tormenting people for days (maybe even longer), scaring them a little until it finally decides to brutally killing them either by itself or forcing one of his target into doing it under its influence. And it's not even against targeting children as well.
  • One-Scene Wonder: Angus Scrimm makes a cameo as a mental patient who is mistaken for the Operator, which serves as a fitting tribute since Scrimm's most famous character, the Tall Man, was used by Victor Surge as a template for the original Slenderman photos.
  • Rooting for the Empire: None of the three leads are particularly likable people from the get-go with Milo being a creepy Stalker with a Crush towards Sara, Charlie being an arrogant "Ivy league douchebag", and Sara being a fame-chasing reporter with a drug habit. This only makes it easier to root for The Operator to kill them off.
  • Tear Jerker: Milo's breakdown halfway in the film, after being spooked to death by The Operator, he rushes to Sarah's apartment only to find the two about to have sex, and Charlie proceeds to constantly give him shit while Milo's having a panic, resulting with Charlie just kicking him out in the apartment. Hearing Milo screaming at the door that he doesn't want to go home and then seeing him crying in his car and trying to call 911 only to stop himself is devastating. Poor guy.
    • Milo's reaction to The Operator killing his dog.
  • Vindicated by History: A very minor example as the film still receives flack from fans of the web series who see it as an In Name Only adaptation. However, following the controversial release of the 2018 Slender Man movie, more people have come to respect this film, believing it not only did a better job at capturing the Slender Man mythos to motion picture, but many also felt it had more effort put into it. Nowadays, more people see it as a So Okay, It's Average horror film at best.
  • The Woobie: Milo, in spades.
    • The whole family in the tape.

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