It’s almost Halloween. While this is wonderful news to someone like me, it’s terrible news for my wife who is once again subjected to a plethora of horror movies in my attempt to show her all of the movies she had been missing out on before she met me. It doesn’t help matters much that I can clearly remembering watching movies like Halloween and The Fog before she was born. Anyway, in order to be a little different, this year’s movie queue has been littered with a lot of new unseen movies, such as The Objective (I’m convinced there was an amazing idea somewhere in that mess), The Strangers (who knew being attacked by three creepy people in masks could be so…dull?) and many others not worth mentioning. It’s been pretty bleak. Just when I was giving up hope, along came a movie that made up for all of the disappointments.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is an excellent example of horror deconstruction in the 21^st century, up there with other recent cinematic examples like All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, and literary examples like Joe Hill’s “Best New Horror”. When I find myself talking about the film with others, inevitably the Scream trilogy is mentioned by others for comparison. And while it’s easy to lump Wes Craven’s franchise with Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, I’d argue that the former spent more of its energy desperately trying to convince a new generation that horror is, like, cool, whereas the latter simply reminds the rest of us why we loved horror in the first place.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon tells the story of a documentary crew as they follow the mysterious and charismatic Leslie Vernon (Nathan Baesel), a man who is skillfully preparing to follow in the footsteps of Freddie Kreuger, Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers (all real killers in this particular universe). Vernon, it turns out, is especially charming and funny; and more importantly, he’s accommodating and upfront about his plans, explaining away the details of his impending killing spree with ease. In fact, Vernon candidly answers a lot of the questions that have perplexed horror fans for decades. Why does the killer set up the corpses to be discovered later? Why does the weapon the victim inevitably takes from the shed break so easily? How is it that no matter how slow the killer walks, he can keep up with his frantically running victims?  

While answering these questions and more, we get to see Vernon’s process of finding his “survivor girl” – the one who will hopefully transform from a feeble virgin to a revenge-driven survivor – and setting up his environment for maximum killings. Along the way, we meet a retired slasher (Scott Wilson), as well as Vernon’s “Ahab”, Doc Halloran (Robert Englund).

One of the biggest advantages that the movie has is that it’s a lot of fun. Like comic books, horror movies have spent the last decade trying to earn justification by weighing itself down with sedateness. In other words, in an attempt to obtain relevance, horror movies have sacrificed fun for the sake of gratuitous torture and somnambulistic moods. That’s not to say there haven’t been exceptions, but it does seem that the genre has become a little heavy-handed. Thankfully, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon finds a nice balance between playing it loose and turning up the creep factor. Englund’s portrayal of Doc Halloran is particularly well done as he channels both the somberness and inherent ridiculousness of Donald Pleasence’s Dr Loomis. Wilson as Eugene, the retired slasher, is another nice touch for the film, especially when he’s offering friendly advice on how to survive (”…the simple answer is run like a motherfucker and don’t stop till the sun comes up.”) or interacting with his wife, Jamie, who is strongly hinted to have once been Eugene’s survivor girl. And of course, Vernon himself, played by Baesel, really makes it all work; his performance is a real breath of fresh air.

The more I consider the movie, the more amazed I am at how successful it is. There is a dramatic shift in format in the third act that’s required to make room for the movie’s biggest twist, and it’s a testament to the strong script and direction that it works so well. In less capable hands, the twist could have potentially damaged the entire movie, much like the highly frustrating Haute Tension.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is a great addition to your horror collection. I’m looking forward to watching it again for many Halloweens to come.

I’ll be back in two weeks to list some of the scariest moments in movies and books.

This is TOO SOON.   

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 6:50 pm and is filed under Too Soon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.