To be honest, I had low expectations while sliding the Netflix DVD of Behind the Mask into my computer. From what I knew, this low-budget horror-thriller was the first feature made by Penn alum Glosserman (C'99), and though it received mostly favorable reviews at various film festivals, I wasn't convinced. But from the opening frames of this meticulously produced film, I wondered if I had judged too quickly. What I ended up watching twice, and with great pleasure, was not a conventional gore-fest, but a hilarious mockumentary of the oft-abused genre. In short, I was bloody wrong.
Behind the Mask is a story about a film crew documenting the next Halloween slasher. In the spirit of Best in Show or This Is Spinal Tap, three amateur journalists follow wannabe horror villain Leslie Vernon as he prepares to out-do his forefathers: Mike Meyers, Jason, and Freddy.
The mockumentary gains momentum when Vernon plans his first killings and the fictional film crew gets involved and implicated. Vernon renames the victims as "target groups." And as he explains the various rules of his haunted house - the future site of his massacre - he admits, "the closet is a sacred place. It is symbolic of the womb. I'm pro-life" . Hard to believe once the blood begins to spill.
Yet the film's greatest strength is Nathan Baesel's portrayal of Vernon, who is at once frighteningly psychotic and hilariously charming. This burgeoning actor's performance is reason enough to view the movie.
Of course, what would this movie be without its Quaker influence? The brilliant self-referential nature of Behind the Mask may be a throwback to director/writer Glosserman's Penn days: an English major, his senior thesis deconstructed Kubrick's The Shining.
