Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is a horror comedy mockumentary that plays with the tropes of the slasher genre in sometimes clever ways, but doesn't completely work as a comedy since it's not actually that funny.
I was immediately reminded of Man Bites Dog (1992) another movie that centers on a documentary film crew following a serial killer around. Though that movie is much, much darker, it succeeds more on the black humor front, which Leslie Vernon could have used more of.
The basic set up is that serial killers like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees were real life villains, and becoming a legendary serial killer is like a career choice, requiring research and training. A film crew follows Leslie Vernon as he plans to make his serial killer debut, donning the identity of a boy who had been killed by a vigilante mob years before.
The movie is not bad, and the performances, especially from Nathan Baesel as Leslie, are fun, and seeing slasher movie tropes (like slow walking, and lowering your heart rate to feign death) presented as things one must train for is amusing. But I guess I just wanted more, and in the end, the movie becomes a standard slasher, dropping the whole mockumentary set-up.
I watched Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon on a Blu-ray from my library. It is also available to rent online.
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