Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)

title: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
directed by: Scott Glosserman
written by: Scott Glosserman, David J. Stieve
photography by: Jaron Presant
music by: Gordy Haab
edited by: Sean Presant
cast: Angela Goethals, Nathan Baesel, Kate Miner
imdb

Having seen what reasonably can be considered too many mockumentaries in the last years, I receive any new proposal coming from this genre with great skepticism. And usually that skepticism, is reinforced with the poor writing of the movie and/or the even worse direction.

That being said, Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon surprised me. The plot is quite simple but original: a crew of filmmakers shots a documentary about a psychokiller, the Leslie Vernon of the title. Not a "normal" serial killer, but a supernatural one; the kind we have seen in Friday 13th, A Nightmare in Elm Street, Halloween... The kind that is impossible to kill, the kind that seems to be everywhere...

But also the idea is well developed with a screeplay with many interesting lines and twists (like the senior psychokiller whose advise is followed by Leslie). That's the best part of the film; the "private life" of a psychokiller, or to put it in another way, "the making of" of a his criminal work. 

Towards the end of the movie the mockumentary becomes a normal movie, but that's a happy decision; because, let's face it, we have seen too many shaking cameras running through the forest or a dark abandoned building, and only [Rec] did really scare us.

It is true that the last third or quarter of the movie swaps the mockumentary for the recurrent teenager-killing-spree option, but even this part is filmed with the sufficient efficiency to make it enjoyable. They sacrifice the coherence of keeping the whole movie as a mockumentary in favor of enhancing the enterntainment. And despite this concession, Behind The Mask is one of the (really) few mockumentaries worth seeing of the last years.

Check our Anthology of Mockumentaries and found-footage.