The Marble Hornets series is in the Found-Footage genre. Its is a relatively recent style of filmmaking, almost exclusively associated with horror, the conceit being all or a large part of the film has been made by the protagonists themselves. It is part of the general democratic urge engendered by capitalist art (albeit harnessed in a non-democratic way) of increasing depth and audience participation.
The thrill of horror and similar genres, such as war or action movies, is it puts you in the midst of the fear and fascination, up against Slender Man or the Cloverfield monster or whatever, but allows you to come through unscathed. When Found Footage works it eliminates the lingering sense that all reasonably sophisticated cinema-goers have, that there is someone behind the camera, a 3rd person, non-participant.
It is still of course a piece of artifice (and therefore, under capitalist conditions, even with the best will, it is a fraudulent democracy). The most obvious difficulty is character motivation. At what stage to the protagonists simply drop the camera and run like all normal human beings would?
The Found Footage genre is usually taken as beginning with Cannibal Holocaust in 1980. Audiences found it so real it was alleged to be a snuff film. But it really took off as a genre in the 1990s. It was in step with movements such as lo-fi (in music) and reality TV. The pursuit of authenticity, keeping it real (or appearing to) was the highest you could aspire. It’s an enduring obsession in a world where public life was perhaps until recently robbed of all co-ordinates; the post-modern age where what mattered was what worked etc. It was left to the letters page of the NME to wonder if a millionaire rapper was representing the streets or if an indie hit celebrated or denigrated working class life. Were they for real?
When we interact with mass media we usually look for the opposite of shock and thrill. When confronted with something new, e.g. the internet, as a society and as individuals, we either reject it wholesale or we try to incorporate and normalise it. If there is a future in going out to the cinema, as opposed to staying in with a movie, it’s in genre that excite, like Found Footage.