Bob's Full Review: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)

Principal Cast: Nathan Baesel, Angela Goethals, Scott Wilson, Robert Englund
Director: Scott Glosserman
Genre: Horror/Comedy

The Basics: A grad school student and her film crew agree to document the preparation of a killer planning a night of mass murder. Vernon gives them an “inside” look into how he chooses his group of victims, how he prepares himself physically for a night of stalking and killing, how he prepares his environment for the event, explains the logistics of mass murder, and invites them along as he terrorizes his home town, who believes he died at the hands of a lynch mob.

Recommendation: Fans of indie slasher flicks and mockumentary films should get a kick out of this one. It’s not incredibly bloody, nor is there much in the way of adult language. The R rating is mostly for what some might see as “glorification” of violence.

My Take: *Spoiler alert* What I like about this movie was it’s dark sense of humor. Leslie Vernon presents himself as a professional in the business of fear and talks about the details of his killing spree as if he were a cooking show host explaining a recipe to the audience. In world of the film, the deus ex machina if you will, Jason, Freddy, and Michael Myers were all real people in the “business” that Leslie Vernon has chosen to occupy himself with. The film does a pretty good job satirizing those films in the way that Leslie prepares for the killing; such using a computer generated news clipping to convince his main target, whom he refers to as his “survivor girl,” that her great uncle was Leslie’s father by means of raping his mother, giving him motive for revenge.
The film also succeeds as a satire of the pov camera style of horror found in films such as “The Blair Witch Project” and “Paranormal Activity.” There are times where the camera cuts away and the film transitions into a more traditional scene style of slasher flick, but then goes back to the handheld pov.
The back-story itself is your basic slasher cliché. Leslie Vernon was the product of a rape, so his mother isolated him from society, keeping him in the cider press shed and making him till the family apple orchard with only a hand scythe. He murders his mother and hangs her body from an apple tree which causes the town to lynch him by throwing him over the local waterfall. On the anniversary of this attack, teenagers go to the Vernon farm to party, and this year he’s gonna show up. As I noted above, somewhat cliché, but it works well for the tone of the movie. This quickly takes a backseat to the plot at hand when it is revealed by Leslie’s psychiatrist (Englund) that he is not Leslie Vernon, but an obsessed mental patient from Reno. I thought this reveal was kind of a funny way to explain how Jason and Michael can appear to die and keep coming back in their various ways- along with Leslie’s devious use of a bulletproof vest and flame retardant makeup under his mask as his protection.

Think of it as Borat meets Jason. It’s kinda funny, not very scary, but well thought out.

Statistics
Cast Performance: Good. Look to the supporting cast on this one. Baesel does a pretty good job as the killer-in-training, but the performances of Robert Englund and Zelda Rubenstein, as brief as they are, shine through this film.

Violence/Gore: Mild. There’s only a couple scenes of people actually getting killed, but the carnage factor is extremely low since no stage blood was used. Most of the victims die off camera.

Nudity: Some. There is one obligatory boob shot, and couple of up skirt/underwear shots, and a two second “suggestive” nudity sex scene.

Ambiance/Soundtrack: Okay. Since this is a mockumentary not a whole lot of attention was paid to creating atmosphere is this film, but it works for the style.

Overall rating: 3.5/5 on the Bob Kline scale.