The Rise of Leslie Vernon

July 4, 10:40 PMPhiladelphia Horror ExaminerSara Gates

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Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

The idea behind this movie is similar to the idea behind Wes Craven's Scream series. In my personal opinion, this particular movie carries it out in a much better way.

Granted, if you aren't overly familiar with the horror movie genre, it may lose a small amount of its appeal; it's chock full of classic horror movie references, from 'Halloween' and 'Friday the 13th' to 'Child's Play' and 'The Shining'. The more you watch the movie, the more references you pick up on.

This 'mockumentary' follows Leslie Vernon, an aspiring supernatural serial killer. He explains the inner workings and provides a behind-the-scenes perspective of famous serial killers we all know and love.

Full of fun language and witty jokes, inside and not, this has got to be not only one of the better original horror movies of the new millenium, but I believe it's the best parody movie as well, both more intelligent and meaningful and funnier than the 'Scary Movie' series.

The first bit of the movie is strictly comedic mockumentary with a few splashes of horror from the perspective of the murderer, but in the last twenty minutes or so, it escalates into a full-scale slasher movie, with 'Survivor Girl' and all.

Nathan Baesel, a new film actor, is amazingly able to portray both a funny good-guy type character and a deranged psychopath without over- or under-acting.

The 'twist ending' is a little predictable, but that may actually be an intentional addition on the filmmakers' part, a sort of homage to the ridiculousness of real horror movies. And the song playing over the end (Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads) really makes up for the fact that, to get to the special ending ending, you have to sit through a very long credits sequence.

Really, it's something you'll have to see for yourself; it's difficult to explain scenes so amazing as Leslie doing cardio while explaining how difficult it is to look like you're walking and not out of breath at all while chasing teenagers running at a full sprint.

Most of the actors are little-known but decent; however, Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger), Kane Hodder (Jason Vorhees) and Zelda Rubinstein (of 'Poltergeist' and 'Scariest Places on Earth' fame)
make brief appearances.