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

Journalist Taylor Gentry and her crew follow Leslie Vernon, aspiring slasher killer, as he prepares to embark on his first killing spree. Every step is documented from stalking and terrorizing his potential final girl to his intense physical training to the planning of every stage of the night of the spree. They even get to meet his aged mentor, a retired killer himself. When the night of the spree comes, Taylor and the crew have to decide if they will stand by and document the carnage or do something to stop his reign of terror and death.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is one of the best meta horror films yet it's still underappreciated. It has everything: a unique world, relatable well drawn characters, laugh out loud humor, and accurate analysis and breakdown of the slasher genre. The world within the film has all the famous horror film slasher killers like Freddy Krueger, Jason Vorhees, and Michael Myers as real people terrorizing real cities and victims. Leslie’s mentor Eugene is implied to be Billy from Black Christmas with comments about a singular sprees in the 60’s and 70’s and disappearing with no plans to return. His jealousy and admiration is palpable at the change the newer slashers made to the genre and at Leslie as he embarks on his own slasher journey.

Leslie Vernon has studied their stories, analyzed them, and found the best way to create his mythology. A local urban legend says thatTwenty years ago, an angry mob took a boy they claimed was possessed by evil. He is thrown over a waterfall. Now, the boy returns to bring vengeance upon the town’s youth. He has planned everything down to the letter and is eager to follow through, already harassing his potential final girl for weeks at her work and ramping up his cardio to catch up with victims while not appearing winded. You might think he would be creepy, but he proves to be a funny, likeable guy. As he gets to know the documentary crew, they become friends and start to become invested in his journey.

The documentary crew follows him through his planning and training phase to actually enacting his plan, step by step. First, Taylor questions him extensively and wants him to explain his motivation, but he refuses, prompting her to find her own answer as they cover his journey. Then they start helping him terrorize his potential final girl, planting evidence for her to find, and documenting his first encounter with his Ahab, essentially Dr. Loomis from Halloween. When they try to interview his final girl, Leslie shows them a bit of how dangerous he can be. Once the fateful night comes, Taylor and the crew change their minds and try to stop Leslie since he's explained every step to them. This is the amazing moment where it goes from mockumentary style to third person. Now, Taylor and the crew are in the slasher film they helped create with some clues, but Leslie also planned for the possibility that they would interfere.

Leslie goes from friendly and affable to a silent, brutal masked killer. He refuses to speak to them and mechanically dispatches his victims one by one. The crew adds to the slasher's story and mythology/ Taylor finds herself the post-modern final girl, chosen by Leslie before anything even started and shown everything in the process. She has to decide if she will take the mantle of final girl, lose her innocence, and get her revenge or if she will just be another in a long list of victims. Either way, she is adding to this slasher's notoriety and mythology, just like he wanted. Leslie knows he might not survive the night, but he will still achieve slasher killer status.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon takes every slasher convention, discusses them at length, and manufactures them. It critiques some of the exploitative elements, lays out the changes from the subgenre's origins, and provides apt (mostly Freudian) analysis of slasher films and final girls. While all of this is wonderrul, the film is also full of relatable characters and tons of laugh out loud moments. If you haven't seen this film, I highly recommend it. It made very little money in its original theatrical run and now has a cult following, but I would love to eventually see a sequel made to analyze and skewer all of those conventions.

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins

Women in Horror: The Final Girls (2015)

Amanda and her daughter Max are having a hard time financially. Amanda goes to audition after audition, but can't escape her past as a one time scream queen in the 1986 slasher Camp Bloodbath. On the way home, they get into a car accident, killing Amanda. Three years later, Max's friend Duncan convinces her to be a guest at a screening of Camp Bloodbath through bribery. She is overcome with emotion seeing her mother and stands to leave, but through a series of coincidences, the theater is set on fire. Max and her friends Duncan, Gertie, and Chris plus her former best friend Vicki escape through the movie screen to safety. Things seem a bit weird since they end up in a forest and they realize they are in the movie when the car with Tina and the other counselors pull up to ask for direction. How can they escape this slasher movie alive?

The Final Girls is a charming, meta slasher that has the characters trying to survive the slasher with their knowledge of the film and the genre's tropes. Camp Bloodbath is closely modeled after Friday the 13th Part II, so it feels familiar and nostalgic to the audience. The film cycles through over and over if they do nothing, so Max and her crew decide to participate in the story. Their initial plan is to stick to the sardonic final girl to survive, but their involvement causes the characters to panic and she dies in a fiery blaze. The group has to come up with a new plan and navigate the world that transports them to the past for flashbacks and text on the screen as physical form. Billy is this world's version of Jason Vorhees who gets revenge on camp counselors with a machete for tormenting and physically and emotionally scarring him.

The characters in the film are very flat and generally badly written. Tina is super chipper and flirtatious. Her whole reason for being is doing a striptease and being killed by Billy. Her innocent question asking why her boobs make him so mad is hilarious. Kurt is similarly oversexed, but with an undercurrent of mocking and insults for everyone around him. Nancy lives the longest and has the biggest transformation of any of the movie characters. Her initial purpose is to have sex with Kurt and die, but her interactions with the real people change her. At first, Max tries to steer Nancy away from sex with lies and peer pressure. The change takes place after they really talk and explain the entire situation. Nancy now has aspirations to go to college and realizes that she doesn't have to be what the script says she should.

At its core, the female friendships and relationships are in the forefront with focus on support and getting at underlying conflicts. Max is obviously upset about her mother's death and keeps people at arm's length. She becomes closer to Gertie, Nancy (as her own person, not just her mom), and even Vicki. Vicki confesses that she's been cruel because she was hurt when Max pushed her away after her mom died. Once they are honest with each other, their facades come down and they are on their way to fixing their friendship. Max forms a friendship with Nancy similar that the one with her mom and gets some extra time plus the opportunity to say goodbye. When she realizes there can only be one final girl, Nancy sacrifices herself in a dance for herself and Max, filled with love and fun despite the horror movie trappings. Her death is heartbreaking and it imbues Max with Final Girl power in addition to resolving some of her feelings about her mom.

The Final Girls is a refreshing movie that both critiques and elevates the tropes of the slasher genre. Virginity is only valued because of the outdated genre, not because any of the modern characters actually find significance in it. There are so many touches of feminism and progressive views that contrast well with the reactionary views within the outdated slasher. While this film does lose a little bit on the second viewing, it's still an enjoyable, fun, and emotional film that I would love to see a sequel to.

My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas

Andrew Dahl is an ensign in the Universal Union in the 25th century. He has just been assigned as a crew member aboard the Intrepid, a famous flagship of the UU. Obviously thrilled and excited to join the xenobiology laboratory, he is eager to join the ranks and put his knowledge to good use. It starts out well enough with him meeting some other newcomers and becoming friends until things get weird. Away missions are very common on this vessel, but so are deadly encounters with extraterrestrials, the deaths of low ranking officers, and the bizarre survival of the ship's captain, Lieutenant Kerensky, and the chief science officer despite any sort of injury or disease. The older crew members know this and tend to avoid the missions or throw the new crew members into it to save themselves. Why are the mortality rates for this ship so high? Will Andrew even live to figure out why?

John Scalzi is one my favorite science fiction writers ever. His Old Man's War series is made of awesome and if you haven't read it, you need to right now. I was dying to know what he would do with the poor, hapless and nameless characters that died practically each episode in Star Trek. I expected fun and silliness (of which there is plenty), but I was pleasantly surprised that Redshirts had so much more depth to it. It's kind of like a mixture Star Trek and Cabin in the Woods. This book is very meta and self aware. It plays with and pokes fun of the conventions of science fiction while managing to be innovative and new at the same time. I don't want to post spoilers, but the plot twist is awesome and very unexpected. It opens up a philosophical discussion of existence and the purpose of life alongside the perpetuation, condemnation, and examination of sci-fi tropes.

The characters made the book amazing for me. Unlike their Star Trek counterparts, they are fully fleshed out characters with diverse backgrounds, extensive training, interesting personalities, and hilarious comedic timing. I liked seeing their world through their perspective. Usually shows are focused on higher ranked characters, but, through Dahl and his friends' eyes, we view the ship from a much different point of view. The codas at the ends are my favorite part because they detail what the ramifications of the resolution of the story are and they pack an emotional punch. One of them even brought me to tears, which was totally unexpected from what I thought was a light summer read.

Redshirts is a half parody half homage to Star Trek that works on a variety of levels. It's one of my favorite reads this year. I highly recommend this funny, emotional, and thought provoking book to any fan of sci-fi.

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins