"Behind the Mask" was one of those movies that has been sitting in my collection for a while, but I had never gotten around to watching it. This is mostly because while I love the horror genre very dearly, I am not a fan of slasher/psycho killer films. They just feel so tired to me, and more of an exercise in how much you can disturb viewers instead of how much you can scare them, which is really the true test of a good horror film. So for a slasher film to entertain me, it's gotta be either really scary, or somehow it has to remake the theme in a fresh, new way. "Behind the Mask" does this really well, and the end product is a really great send-up of all the slasher film stereotypes in a darkly humorous way.
The plot centers around a group of grad students who are filming a documentary. They've been contacted by a guy named Leslie who claims that he is going to be the next famous psycho killer, and consequently the first half of the film is often laugh-out-loud hilarious as the crew follows this guy around as he sets up his victims, writes his own backstory, and even visits with a retired "veteran" of the business. However, we are talking about a psycho killer here, and the light heartedness takes a turn for the frightening when all of the preparation begins to actually come to fruition, and the film crew have to decide whether to stand by while the bodies fall or step in and do something about it.
Stuffed full of little inside-jokes for those who are familiar with the genre, (Leslie's pet turtles are named Zowie and Church, the names of the pets from Pet Sematary and Pet Sematary 2) and a cameo from Freddy Kruger himself, Robert Englund, "Behind the Mask" is a smart, frightfully funny film.
