Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon may actually appeal beyond the limited fanbase for horror who pipe up in our group. (I.e., someone other than me might conceivably enjoy this.) After Scream, or even Wes Craven’s earlier self-reflexive horror flicks, many proclaimed the end of ‘real’ horror (killed off by that slasher irony). More recently folks like Rob Zombie and Eli Roth splatter with an ostensibly earnest glee, thus recuperating that ‘real’ horror (and irony gives up the ghost). Behind the Mask doesn’t have its cake and eats it, too: it’s a very smart, sly critical send-up of the slasher pic which reinvigorates the genre through, rather than against, its ironic stance. I dug it.
I won’t spoil the film, just in case, but it begins in a universe where slashers are real–a reporter briefly recounts what “we all know” about Jason Voorhees, Freddie Kruger, Michael Myers, in prologue to a documentary being filmed about a slasher-in-training, the eponymous Leslie V. The film does have its (quite enjoyable) flashes of mockumentary, with for instance a particularly funny rant by Leslie about how much cardio training is necessary to be able to catch fleeing victims while maintaining the slasher’s crucial plodding pace. But it is equally astute–and entertaining–as a dissertation on the mythos and generic structure of slasher films, with some fine psycho-theorizing about the gendered imagery of the pics, given a real clever punch because it’s delivered by a wannabe-killer rather than Carol Clover. But about 2/3 of the way through the film, in a move both structurally and aesthetically realized with a real skill, the camera stock and composition shifts to horror-film rather than documentary style and we are in Leslie’s world, and the carefully-detailed “necessary” structural elements of the slasher’s work are meticulously discarded and reconstructed. The movie works as a beautiful textbook illustration of the performativity of genre.
Plus it’s just a damn kick. Really well shot, often very funny, acted to a T (with particular style in its neophyte lead Leslie and fun from B-horror mainstays Scott Wilson and Robert Englund).