WhatzUp

Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon
by Derek Neff

BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is a disappointingly sterile mockumentary about an aspiring serial killer who lets a student film crew follow him around and make a documentary about him.

The film crew is comprised of student journalist Taylor (Angela Goethals) and two camera/sound guys whose faces we never actually see until the movie's final act. Taylor interviews Leslie Vernon (Nathan Baesel) as if he were a friendly neighborhood fixture announcing his intentions to open a bakery shop. The whole movie takes place in an alternate universe in which slasher-film killers like Halloween's Michael Myers and Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger are not only real characters but artists and folk legends to boot. It's a puzzling premise, since not even in those aforementioned movies were these killers regarded as artists, and since not even in any parallel universe worth talking about would the killing of innocent people be regarded by society as admirable. The movie is so completely divorced from the basic tenets of human psychology that despite its undeniable wit I found it hard to enjoy.

Behind the Mask works best as a light-hearted, semi-academic analysis of the classic 80s-era slasher film. Writer/director Scott Glosserman knows his stuff, and, though some conventions of slasher cinema (such as the observation that sexually active teens are usually killed off and the virgin is usually the heroine) have already been thoroughly explored, others (such as the convention of the monomaniacal "Ahab" character, the use of closets and the "red herring" victim) are somewhat fresh and interesting. As the title killer, Nathan Baesel exhibits a verve and charisma reminiscent of early Jim Carrey. He practically dances around screen, he's so gleefully into what he's doing. ("You have no idea how much cardio I have to do," he gripes at one point while kick-boxing.)

The role of Taylor, though, is considerably more tricky. Angela Goethals does what she can with it, but there's just no way to get a fix on a seemingly well balanced, "normal" person who unquestioningly goes along with a killer's plans, seemingly unaware of the moral ramifications of premeditated murder. (Her moral obliviousness might have been treated as a statement about journalism or voyeurism or something, but it's not.) Some horror fans will be able to enjoy Behind the Mask for its comic moments and its clever knocking down of the so-called fourth wall. But I just couldn't get a fix on it and found its inconsistent tone and parallel-world presumptions silly and shallow. If you're jonesin' for meta-horror, I'd recommend taking a fond backward glance at the Scream movies, or Man Bites Dog, or even the undeservedly forgotten 1994 movie Wes Craven's New Nightmare, all of which manage to explicate the genre and still give us characters we can genuinely care about. Heck, they even manage to be pretty scary from time to time, which this movie isn't at all.