Talk us through itIn the Leslie Vernon universe slasher heavy hitters Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Chucky actually exist for real. In fact, being a serial killer is a career choice, though where the heck you pick up your pay cheque is never explained. Anyway, Leslie wants to join the ranks of the elite killers and has invited an Ohio University news crew to capture his inaugural night of terror on camera. Leslie has hijacked a local legend about an abused boy who murdered his parents and is then thrown over a waterfall by the requisite town mob. On the twentieth anniversary of the boy’s death, Leslie will return to murder the kids who are spending the night at his old house thus hopefully beginning an annual ritual. Making the scene even more creepy, the house is situated in the middle of an overgrown orchard! News reporter Taylor and her two man crew are soon filming Leslie going through his training regime – ah, that’s how psychos can keep up with running victims by walking – his picking of targets, and his build towards the night of nights. Forgetting the odd plot-hole, this is actually pretty well crafted, though I wasn’t entirely sure some of the time jumps were intended. Along the way we meet a retired serial killer named Eugene who married the only final girl to escape his clutches, learn why your standard slasher tropes are sacred, and get one heck of a plot twist. One of the best modern horror movies of the hand held camera type ensues. Ready to see if Leslie can fulfil his destiny in the orchard that dripped blood?
Review“It’s going to get wet in here tonight. Lace your boots up kiddies.” – LeslieBehind the Mask was scoring heavily with film festivals and North American horror sites last year so I was heavily anticipating a DVD release Downunder. Note, we don’t tend to get cinema releases for independently made horror flicks in this country, can you feel our pain brothers and sisters? The problem with anticipation is that invariably you end up depressed, wondering if you should put on the hockey mask you keep in your closet, or throwing your hands in the air like you just don’t care somewhere in the first act of the film. I blame this on either one of two major causes: either the sort of fanboy who thinks Rob Zombie’s Halloween is better than the original has polluted the website where you first read about the movie, or people like Harry Knowles have been raving about it in order to keep their snouts firmly fixed in the studio trough. Either way, it’s prime disappointment territory and you do tend to get cynical about idiots posting on North American sites and the latest hyped horror flick headed your way. Thankfully, Behind the Mask lives up to its hype and delivers one hell of an impact for an independent production. Director/writer Scott Glosserman effectively deconstructs the slasher sub genre in pretty ingenious fashion. When we first meet Leslie, via the film crew, he seems to be employing the Voorhees teleportation device. The dude keeps the crew guessing as they glimpse him behind a shed, in an upstairs window, before finally he appears behind them. Glosserman does offer some explanation for this later in the movie as Leslie goes through his training regime and the Orchard of Doom setup. In fact Glosserman offers all sorts of explanations for the superhuman aspects of slasher villains, most of which will have you believing. So yep, you’ll find out why Jason can take out a whole camp of counsellors, why Michael seems to keep coming back from the dead, how Freddy can be in the right place at the right time, and just how a hulking dude lumbering after a running heroine can keep up with her. Finally an explanation as to why the car never starts in horror flicks! To see slasher conventions being explained in a logical fashion and made to seem like just a “part of the job” certainly knocked me on my arse. So that’s why the bodies of victims are strategically placed for people to find, I just thought it was Jason’s attempts to emulate the photos in “Good Housekeeping”! Crucial to the success of the first two acts of the movie is the central character of Leslie Vernon, nailed by Nathan Baesel in a surprisingly emotive performance. Leslie is hyper, redefines charm, and you just might find yourself liking him. Certainly the film crew – the first two acts are shot in handheld mockumentary style – fall for Leslie’s schlock act. So you get drawn in as Leslie goes through his regime, introduces us to his final girl (here strangely called “survivor girl”) from afar, and sets up his night of mayhem. It’s only when Leslie takes out the librarian, his red herring, that the film crew start to get uneasy. Most audience members have probably worked out where this is all headed btw. In fact the film crew sticks with Leslie right through his playbook of how things are going to go down, up until the time Leslie does in the first teenage couple in bloody fashion. It’s a commanding, and dare I say it, charismatic performance from the hyperactive Nathan Baesel, and it will keep you glued to the screen. Glosserman constructs his movie in two different fashions. For the first two thirds of the movie we have things being shown mockumentary style, with fake interviews and the sort of background detail you would expect from a documentary. Then something happens and we slip into a slasher movie, with the original film crew's knowledge of slashers gained from Leslie up against Leslie’s ability to “change the plot”. Surprisingly, Glosserman has his characters following the psycho’s pre-announced script and it’s all perfectly natural and logical. Taylor and team know what’s going to happen, what the sequence will be, but are powerless to change the direction things move in. Glosserman holds his major twist till almost the end of the movie, but unfortunately a lot of the audience are going to see it lumbering over the horizon before Glosserman’s characters work it out. 
Another aspect of Glosserman’s film that had me humming along to his beat was the evocation of the mystic, almost supernatural aspect of the killer. Sure, we learn that your average psycho gets back up due to wearing a protective vest – that’ll explain Michael withstanding all those bullets – but Glosserman has some subtle stuff happening. The whole “during the harvest moon, ground of blood etc” comes home to roost just when a cameraman doesn’t want it, Leslie takes one hell of a lot of punishment, and you will have to wait till the closing credits to get the full supernatural aspect thing smacking you right in the face. For once someone wasn’t shying away from the whole Freudian aspect of the typical slasher flick. Glosserman channels Freud without missing a step and gets into some pretty heavy duty philosophy with it. You can either dig into this part of the flick or give it a miss, either way it’s not going to affect your overall enjoyment of the film. Final girls generally tool up in a shed according to Glosserman, and hence sheds are sacred objects filling in as a metaphor for the womb. We do get the birth channel from there but I wasn’t buying that aspect to be honest, but will be for sure checking the ScaryMinds back catalogue of slashers to see if Glosserman was correct in his interpretation of symbolism as used in the sub genre. An interesting aspect to Glosserman’s take was the whole maturing of the final girl, that actually reflects one of the theories about what slashers actually mean: in a nutshell, it’s all fear of growing up. Whether or not you dial into this sort of stuff depends on your requirements for slasher flicks having some sort of underlying meaning. Heck, they are cheap exploitation cinema, in some quarters anything gets overanalysed by the navel-gazers. Gore hounds aren’t going to be happy with Behind the Mask, the kills happen off camera, and there’s a surprising lack of gore going down. This could of course be Glosserman sending two fingers in the direction of the studios who have toned down slashers to such an extent that they are no longer relevant to the development of the horror genre as a whole. Angela Goethals (Taylor) was kicking it in her own right even though Nathan Baesel owned every scene he was in. Robert Englund (Doc Halloran) channelled Dr. Loomis, but needed more screen time as the “Ahab” dude; some more work needed to go in there to meat out the role of Leslie’s nemesis. Finally Kate Lang Johnson (Kelly) was great eye candy, loved her reaction to the camera crew bursting into the upstairs bedroom, and she simply nailed the indignation over everything being her fault because she was sexually active. There’s a healthy dose of cameos going down to keep everyone happy with life. Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street) already mentioned as the Dr Loomis stand in, Zelda Runinstein (Poltergeist), and Kane Hodder (Friday the 13th Parts VII and VIII), amongst others. In terms of T&A Glosserman wasn’t depriving us; dudes get a close up of a nice pair of boobs (no idea whose those were), Kate Lang Johnson in her undies, another chick going for heavy up skirting action (twice), and lots of short skirts. The girl’s got Leslie’s almost comical mask. For the most part Behind the Mask dispensed with a score, documentary being filmed remember, but it did kick in with a typical slasher score during the final act. Thankfully no rap tracks or half arsed rock. Hey, it really isn’t a studio movie then.
Summary ExecutionIt’s not everyday you get a modern slasher with the ability to take the sub genre in a new direction, and it shouldn’t really surprise us that it took an Indie production like Behind the Mask to achieve that. The movie comes with a whole bunch of hype, and with good reason as it simply rocks the house down. While mockumentaries such as The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield come at you with marketing sizzle coming out their arses and then deliver a burnt snag at best, Behind the Mask dispenses with the sizzle, dumps a whopping big T-bone on your plate, and says take it or leave it. This is a horror flick made by someone who loves the genre and appreciates how it works. I’ll certainly be first in line for director Glosserman’s next movie, the dude knows what he’s doing.Since there’s no box office figures available let’s get down and dirty with all the referencing going on in the movie. The first time Taylor interviews Eugene and Jamie (reference to Jamie Lee?), there is a Lament Configuration box sitting on a table, which is a clear nod to Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987). Doc Halloran’s wardrobe and facial hair is pretty much identical to that sported by Dr. Loomis in the Halloween movies. At the start of Behind the Mask Taylor is standing in front of the Red Rabbit Pub, a reference to the Red Rabbit matchbook found by Dr. Loomis in Halloween (1978). During the course of the introduction to the Leslie Vernon documentary, Kane Hodder (Jason Voorhees) is seen walking into 1428 Elm Street, the former address of Nancy in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. When Leslie makes eye contact with the “virgin girl”, three girls can be spotted playing jump rope in the background, clearly another reference to the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. And finally, while Leslie is scoping out the school, three female students are sighted, once again a clear nod to Halloween. There’s probably a whole bunch more I didn’t note, so send them into us if into spotting references. For once I’m going with a full on recommendation for a slasher flick, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon isn’t simply a great slasher flick, it’s a cult classic that defies the generally “B” grade nature of its sub genre. I’m calling the movie the best slasher of the new century thus far and an important milestone in the development of the dark genre. Run to your nearest DVD outlet today and let Leslie Vernon charm you to death.
ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ... Almost the perfect horror movie, and it's a slasher!
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