Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, and the subversion of the Horror genre

The Rise of Leslie Vernon is an unusual horror film, perhaps one of a few of its kind. It begins with a pseudo news-report, detailing the murders committed by notorious horror film serial killers, such as Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees, before re-aligning to a more central, modern day setting, as if to suggest that these murders were committed within a real-life universe.

This is not where the strangeness ends. The Rise of Leslie Vernon is a fly on the wall mockumentary, following serial killer (presumed dead) Leslie Vernon as he plots his latest mass killing spree, and gives first-hand insight to the documentary film crew who have given him the spotlight for an amateur film project of their own.

The rest of the film is a mixture of parody, farce and the genuinely bizarre. Whereas Scream tore the horror genre apart, and created what was essentially a horror-comedy hybrid, demonstrating the dos and don'ts of how to be a horror film character, Behind the Mask pulls it apart to an extra degree, pulling back one dimension of this spoof and instead going back in on itself. In the final third of the film, we are shown how the stereotypical characters in a horror film are meant to behave and react to certain life-threatening situations. However, by acknowledging those typical behaviour they're supposed to be replicating, they realise that they need to do the exact opposite in order to survive, given that the tired and predictable nature of the horror genre means the serial killer will know exactly how the potential victims will react, and vice versa.

It's an extremely baffling film, in that it flips the very idea of genre stereotypes on its head, and then flips it again, in an extremely obvious self-referential fashion. For what is in actual fact a rather bland film, it's an interesting glimpse into what is a very tired genre, and has been for decades, as exposed by Scream 4, a film which attempted to mock itself but instead ended up demonstrating just how out of touch even that was.