Movie Review- Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is a horror-comedy that's part mockumentary and part slasher. It's a pretty funny film, but there are a few key flaws that keep it from being truly great. The idea of the movie is quite clever; it's about a serial killer who hires a film crew to document him as he prepares for his newest reign of terror. However, the ending is weak and causes the film to fall apart, and ruins what could have been a horror movie that was a cut above the rest. But all that aside, the good moments in Behind the mask are excellent, and mostly outweigh the bad. It's rough around the edges, but it's a lot of fun.

A majority of the film is shot documentary-style, relying mostly on dialog and characters to move the story. This is really cool, because it's rare that a horror film ever spends much time fleshing out their characters. And while there's only a few characters that actually get any depth, it's still nice for a change to have a main character and a villain who aren't overused archetypes. The acting is really uneven, though. Leslie is played by a guy named Nathan Baesel, who sort of looks like Dane Cook, but unlike Dane Cook, this guy is actually funny. His performance is quite interesting; he plays the role seriously, but gives it the right amount of casualness to befit the film's comedic side. The comedic side of the character is ultimately his undoing, though, because the character of Leslie is a little too goofy to be taken seriously as a villain, and thus when Nathan finally dons the killer's mask, it's really hard to find him intimidating, even though the film clearly wants us to. The other main character is Taylor, the director of the documentary, and lead interviewer. She's fairly decent in her role, and at least doesn't ham up her role like everyone else in the film.

The supporting cast of characters are all intentionally stereotypes that parody the stereotypes in slasher movies. Accordingly, a lot of the acting from these characters is really bad. It's not the hilarious kind of bad acting, though. The supporting cast is mostly just annoying. Thankfully their screen time is limited, and most of the time they aren't talking. There's also a strange cameo from Zelda Rubinstein, the medium from "Poltergeist". She's barely on screen for two minutes, but even her performance is a bit lackluster.  Fortunately we do get a fun performance from Robert Englund. He plays a brief role as a parody of Donald Pleasance's character from the "Halloween" series. Englund does a surprisingly good impression of Donald Pleasence, and while Englund doesn't get a whole lot of screen time, he's still a fun character to watch.

The problem with the main characters though, ties back to the weak ending I previously mentioned. There's a bit of a joke throughout the movie that the film crew documenting Leslie is very passive about his homicidal tendencies. They appear to be a bit apprehensive of him, but otherwise they have no problem with watching him set up his plans for his murder spree. Only until Leslie kills the first two of his teenage victims does Taylor the director suddenly grow a conscience and attempt to stop him, eventually guilting her camera crew into helping her stop him. This strikes me as odd, because Taylor and her crew didn't bat an eye when Leslie killed a librarian right in front of them. Why they suddenly started caring about Leslie's victims is beyond me. Taylor also tries to talk to Leslie's main victim early on in the film, to warn her about her impending doom or something, but again this seemingly comes out of nowhere; outside of those two instances, Taylor and her crew barely seem bothered by hanging out with a murderer.

The humor in Behind the Mask is great; it's heavily based on character quirks and the deconstruction of horror movies. Behind the Mask seemingly takes place in a universe where all of the major slasher film franchises were actual murder sprees. The whole point of the documentary portion of the film is to show how Leslie finishes up some of his last minute prep, while he explains how he has his entire killing spree planned out. It's quite funny to imagine Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees working on their cardio to prep for a murder spree, or meticulously nailing various windows and doors shut to ensure their victims can only leave through certain exits. It's hard to describe much of the humor besides those few examples, but the humor is definitely the film's strongest suit. If you enjoy movies like "This Is Spinal Tap" or "Waiting for Guffman", you're bound to get a few laughs here and there.

Unfortunately, despite the great humor, the film really falls short at the end, when it expects you to take it seriously. One of the major problems with the ending is the cinematography. Almost all of the film is shot documentary-style, except for the scene with the librarian, and a few times when Leslie is narrating his plans. Those scenes are shot in the conventional studio style, although it really only makes sense for the narration scenes. I could have looked past this, but when Taylor randomly decides to grow a conscious and save the teens from Leslie Vernon, she tells her camera crew to leave their equipment behind, and the rest of the film is shot like a regular movie. Logically, this makes sense, because no sane person would be carrying a video camera at that point. But this ruins the mockumentary tone, and sort of violates the fourth wall, like a toned down version of the ending of "Blazing Saddles". The movie had a vaguely realistic feel to it, and felt almost like a found footage film, and switching the camera's point of view feels a bit alienating.

From this point on, the film indicates that we're supposed to be scared, and that we're supposed to find these scenes suspenseful, because we supposedly can't anticipate Leslie's plans because of Taylor's sudden intervention. But there's no suspense or scares to be found, because everyone runs to or dies in nearly the exact same places Leslie said they would in the narration sequence earlier in the film. Even Leslie doesn't look that menacing; his mask is pretty creepy looking, but the rest of his outfit makes him look comically backwoods. This might have been funny if the third act was played with the same humor of the preceding hour of the movie, but we're clearly being told to find Leslie scary, and he's just not. (As a side note, the face paint Leslie uses under his mask makes him look like Alice Cooper, although I'm sure that was intentional. But even then, that makes him even less scary when he has his mask off.)

Towards the end of the third act, Taylor goes through the same character arc that Leslie said his final victim would go through. This is supposed to be symbolic or something, but it lacks any meaning because the audience was anticipating this, since Leslie previously narrated over a nearly identical scene. Taylor eventually faces down against Leslie in the exact same manner as he had predicted. Instead of this feeling like the film's events are coming full circle or something, it instead feels very repetitive, because as I've previously said, the entire third act was already played out in a narration sequence in the second act. The ending just doesn't work, because we've already saw the ending barely a half-hour prior.

Overall, this is a pretty good movie. The ending is lame, but the good mostly outweighs the bad. The funny moments are really funny, and even though the ending is lame, there have been far worse ending to movies. Heck, some of you may even find humor in the ending, even if they are trying to play it seriously. It's a hilariously dark and loving tribute to slasher movies of yore, and if you are a horror fan, it's worth checking out. It's not perfect, but for the most part it's hilarious, and if you can ignore disappointing ending, you'll probably enjoy the first two acts.

Enjoyment- 4/5

Quality- 3/5

IMDB Page- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437857/