Maskerade

I know they remade Friday 13th, but Mask Maker feels almost like they've remade the remake. Seriously, 'modern' slasher films, i.e. those with a - seemingly - indestructible undead serial killer have been around for nearly forty years, yet, in that time, film-makers don't seem to have been able to come up with anything more inspiring that 'teenage couples have sex and die.' If any couple partakes in pre-marital sex, you can write them off the cast list (same goes for any nudity at all).

Mask Maker is about your average undead serial killer, stalking a load of annoyingly-attractive American teens in a big house two of them have recently bought. There are attempts at explaining why he's undead, but it doesn't really matter. His 'gimmick' is that he doesn't really have a face and he rips off victims' faces and uses them as his own (didn't they do that in Texas Chainsaw?). It's worth noting that if you're wearing an ill-fitting, blood-soaked, torn-off mask of someone, all your friends will instantly think you're really them and not bother asking questions until you've hacked them to bits.

Talking about hacking people to bits, the death scenes are particularly uninspiring. Yes, there's a bit of blood, but nothing very original.

It's predictable too. No major plot surprises here. The clichés come thick and fast, especially with the 'locals who always know something' about the horror that is to come.

Basically, if you're into films with undead killers stalking dumb teens, just stick to Friday 13th. It may be a little old by now, but it's still better than this.

Oh, and if you're thinking of buying a property, get your solicitor to check that no psychotic undead serial killers aren't buried somewhere on the premises. If you find out there are, I recommend returning to the estate agents and looking for somewhere else.

Please don't get me wrong, I did enjoy this movie. I just wanted to enjoy it a lot more than I did. See, in an age of remakes, I feel like it's really hard to find fun, original material so it makes it so much more rewarding when you do. But there's few things worse than feeling like you got the old bait and switch. And that's sort of how I feel about this movie.

Sure, the story and plot aren't exactly a rip off, it's just that someone wasn't trying hard...at all...to make it original. It's a stalk-and-slash movie (Haloween, Friday The 13th) where a guy makes masks out of his victims at an old, abandoned farm house (Texas Chainsaw Massacre). I wish there were more to it, but not really. That being said, don't let that alone turn you off of this movie. It really isn't without it's charms. The kills are fun, the actors actually do a pretty good job in their roles, and the effects are surprisingly good. If you want to just sit on the couch (preferably with some sort of adult beverage) and have some fun, this isn't the worst way you could do it. You just have to get past the relatively well-tread plot.

A witty script and an appealing cast almost save this otherwise rote slasher movie. A college business student gets a suspiciously good deal on a spooky empty old house in the country and buys it for his less-than-impressed girlfriend. The place is filled with valuable antiques (a plot angle that goes nowhere). The local general store, called "Pluto's", is run by Michael Berryman, an inside joke for THE HILLS HAVE EYES fans. The boyfriend notices a graveyard in back of the house and immediately elects to start wrecking it. He pulls a large ornamental pole out of a grave for no reason, inadvertantly resurrecting a mad slasher named Leonard who killed everybody in sight some 25 years before. One of the house's previous occupants was a woman who spoke French, which is sufficient to qualify her as a cliche' evil foreigner with magic powers. The typical gang of friends arrives to help renovate the place and to give the killer some people to bump off. The murderer is an unoriginal blend of Leatherface (a mentally ill victim of a childhood disease that caused his face to fall off, he peels the faces off his victims and wears them as masks), Jason Voorhees (he's a reanimated corpse with a mama fixation and can be fooled and temporarily calmed down by the sight of a girl wearing his mother's old clothes) and even the killer from TERROR TRAIN (each time he kills, he's wearing the "mask" taken from his previous victim). They might as well have called him Leonardface. Disappointingly, his 'real' face is never shown even though there's a lot of talk about how ugly he is. Guess they couldn't come up with an adequate makeup design. He clomps around stabbing and decapitating everyone until the telegraphed, by-the-numbers "evil triumphs" ending, which is more out of place than usual in a movie with such lighthearted dialogue. The acting is good and the snappy patter makes this a highly entertaining movie for most of its running time, and even the gore effects, lighting and cinematography are well above average for an entry in the teenkill genre. It's a shame that depressing ending is tacked on there, making the entire film feel like a waste of time. If you liked HATCHET's blend of funny scripting and FRIDAY THE 13TH style murders, you might enjoy this too. It was shot under the title MASKERADE.

Not quite the slasher film I was expecting but I still enjoyed it. A young couple and their friends start renovating an old house they have just bought, but not before unleashing the dead face stealing killer buried in the garden cemetery. Through use of flashbacks from the killers perspective and our heroin reading exerts from the killers mothers diary we get an insight into the happenings leading up to the creation of the stalking brute.

Not the most original plot as it's a cross between Halloween and the Texas chainsaw massacre but with less gore than those two movies. What really saved this film for me was the dialogue between all of the friends and the acting from such a young mostly unheard of cast. It made the characters relationships more believable than I'm used to seeing in this sort of movie and I actually liked all of them. Usually there's a couple of characters I hate and can't wait to see them get murdered, but I found myself quite disappointed to see some of them go. It was also great to see Michael Berryman again as well as Treat Williams even if they only had small roles.

The movie doesn't go all out on the gore front. A couple of the kills are almost off camera. The few kills you do see are done quite well but some quick cuts hamper you seeing exactly what you're looking at. What the film really relies on is the atmosphere created by the creepy house and the dank surrounding woodland. This really works as the setting is very remote and only adds to the feeling of dread. We have the killer Looming around the side of buildings in the background of some shots just like Michael Myers an often over used trick but done very well in this instance.

The only thing I didn't like was the ending a couple of things didn't quite work for me at the end but it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the movie overall. All in all this was a good little horror which I would recommend to fans of the genre.

While not overly great, the movie "Maskerade" wasn't overly bad either. It had enough material to prove entertaining enough for a single watching.

The story in "Maskerade" is fairly horror / slasher movie cliché. Roughly summarized; a group of young people go to an old house (in this case, they buy it) with a vile, dark history. They awaken something wicked from its slumber, unintentionally. And now they are being killed, one by one. End of story. And it is pretty much straight from the 'how to make a slasher movie' handbook. Nothing new here in those terms.

The acting in the movie was good, and there were some interesting names on the cast list. Those including Michael Barryman (playing Fred), Terry Kiser (playing Mr. Peck), Treat Williams (playing Mr. Tucker) and a very short appearance by Jason London (playing Arthur Bronw). These people were the most impressive, but the young cast did a good job as well. Most memorable was Nikki Deloach (playing Jennifer), though.

As for the gore and guts in the movie, well it isn't a splatter-fest. The movie has just enough gore and gruesomeness to keep you interested, without being too much.

The biggest turn-off in the movie, if you will, was how it too much like other classic horror / slasher movies such as "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween". How you ask? Well, the "Halloween" part would be with the mask. Sure, Meyers used a firm-set rubber mask, while the killer in "Maskerade" wears a mask from people's faces. Oh wait, back it up here, can you say "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" anyone? And as for the "Friday the 13th" part, well when Jason Voorhees saw what he believed to was his mother, he froze up and stopped, as did the killer in this movie when Jennifer was wearing his mother's old dress. No, no, no! You do not "borrow" these things from classic movies, you make up your own stuff. This really brought the movie down in value and worth.

One thing that the movie should get praise for, though, was the ending. Now, I am not spoiling it in anyway by revealing stuff, but I will say that it is a typical Hollywood horror movie ending, but with a really great 'twist'. I liked that ending, and it almost, just almost, brought justice to all the other stuff that went wrong in the movie.

Overall, then "Maskerade" is good for a single watching, so if you have nothing better to do one evening, and if you like horror / slasher movies, then give "Maskerade" a chance. Despite its faults, it still is a decent enough addition to the genre.