 |
 |
| |
Genre |
| |
Comedy, Horror, Suspense/Thriller |
| |
|
| |
Running Time |
| |
92 min |
| |
|
| |
Distributor |
| |
Anchor Bay |
| |
|
 Official Website |
 Get Movie Showtimes and Tickets
NEW YORK REVIEW
Scott Glosserman's Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon also tells the story of a director's comeuppance, but the filmmakers have the modesty not to try to pass off their self-consciousness as self-criticism. Written by David J. Stieve and Glosserman, this is a rambunctiously postmodern exploitation flick—a mockumentary in which a film-school hotshot (Angela Goethals) decides to follow around a novice serial killer who'd like to be in the same league as Freddy, Jason, and Michael (all of whom exist in this particular alternate universe). His name is Leslie Vernon (twitchy Nathan Baesel), and he's such a insightful student of slasherdom—and such a bitter misfit—that he could almost be a film critic.
Working in a mini-genre whose bones would appear to have been picked clean by the likes of Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven, Glosserman and Stieve find a few pints of fresh blood. Glosserman doesn't get much out of Robert Englund (not as Freddy, but a variation of the Donald Pleasence psycho-hunter in Halloween), but there's a marvelously creepy-funny scene with Scott Wilson (back from Korea) as a retired slasher who has made a cozy home with his last "Survivor Girl," and the film crew's documentary-ethics debates (do they or don't they warn Leslie's victims?) seem, in this day and age, amusingly un-farfetched. It's too bad that in a sop to the slasher audience, Glosserman discards the mockumentary setup about fifteen minutes from the end and delivers a real hack-'em-up climax—suggesting that post-post-modernism might in fact be careerism. —Reviewed by David Edelstein, New York Magazine
|
Release Date: 03/16/07 (Future Release)
Email
Print
