Mask Maker (Mask Maker: Meet Your Maker) (2011)

As I mentioned in my tribute to him after his death, when he and I would get together every now and then, my good friend, filmmaker Jeff Burr, would often either loan or just flat-out give me some stuff on DVD and Blu-Ray that he felt I may get a kick out of... or because it was stuff he bought, decided he didn't want, and then pawned off on me. And, of course, me being the type of person who feels obligated to, at least, give it a try when someone gives me something, I would attempt to watch every one of them, even if a lot of it was painful to sit through. The first time we did this was in the summer of 2011, a little over a year after Jeff and I first met at the Dark Woods Con in Pikeville, Kentucky. Among the batch of stuff he gave me, this was the only one that came in an actual DVD case, whereas everything else was either on a burnt disc or in one of those cheap paper envelopes. As you can see from the cover, it looked interesting enough: a guy with a bloody axe standing in front of a tree with skinned faces hanging from its branches, and an old house in the background, giving it an unmistakable Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibe (this is not the actual DVD cover that I got but a variation of it, which I think looks cooler). I wasn't expecting anything major, but it looked like it could be a fun, gory time. Summation: eh, it was okay. It's definitely nothing special, as it's a typical slasher movie, with a by-the-numbers premise, and a central villain who feels cobbled together from two particular horror icons. And, like Headspace the other day, it features a number of familiar genre faces, although in this case, one of them actually has a pretty major role. But as by-the-numbers and cheap as it is, I would much rather watch Mask Maker than some of the other stuff we've looked at in the past few days, including Bruiser, Dreamcatcher, Miner's Massacre, and Forest Primeval, as well as the aforementioned Headspace, hence the lack of the Movies That Suck tag here. 

(There's a weird situation with the movie's title. As you can see, the poster artwork says Meet Your Maker under the title, which is also on the DVD cover. I assumed that was just a tagline, but it actually appears as part of the title in the film itself. I don't know if that was a mistake or what, but I've never seen that before. Just to be safe, though, I opted to use that version of the title as well.)

After leaving class on her birthday, college student Jennifer Ritchie is surprised when her boyfriend, Evan Reynolds, tells her that his gift to her is a trip to an undisclosed location. Following a long drive where she's forced to keep her eyes closed, she finds that he's driven her out to an old, rundown, isolated house in the South, the Tucker home. Initially angered, as she thinks it's a cruel prank, and becoming even more irritated when Evan tells her that he bought the house, he then says he purchased it for a fairly cheap price and put the deed in her name. He also plans to flip it and its forty acres' worth of land so they can pay off their student loans and eventually get married. That's enough to win Jennifer over and they proceed to look around the property. While doing so, Evan comes across a strange grave in a small cemetery in the woods near the house. He removes a staff stuck in the mound and is hit by a foul stench, then notices that there's something like a skull hanging from it. Unbeknownst to him, an electrician sent out to the house to activate their power is then brutally murdered while fiddling with the fuse-box. Jennifer and Evan spend the night at the house, but Jennifer is awakened in the middle of the night by a loud bang downstairs. She goes to investigate and doesn't find anything, but is unaware that she's being watched. The couple visit the town store the next day, and when they mention that they've bought the Tucker house, some of the locals, particularly a man named Mr. Peck, seem very uneasy about it. That afternoon, their friends, Hillary, Annette, Mike, and Ken, come out to celebrate Jennifer's birthday, as well as help with the remodeling. While the girls are looking around upstairs, Jennifer finds an old journal belonging to a Lydia Beaumont, who talks about her young son, Leonard, and how he suffered from a horrible and potentially life-threatening infection after getting cut in his scalp. As the six young adults wander about the property, they're watched by a mysterious man who, after a bonfire party that night, begins picking them off one by one, then flays off their faces and wears them as masks. Jennifer soon learns the horrific full story about Lydia and Leonard, and must now save herself from the deranged killer, who happens to be a ghost from the past who won't stay buried.

The story for Mask Maker was written by two people: Jake Kennedy and Eric Miller. Kennedy, who's from London and started out in advertising over there, has both written and directed a handful of short films and features, with the latter including 2007's Days of Darkness and 2009's Penance. He was also a small member of the art department on Mission: Impossible 2 and a production assistant on 2001 Maniacs. Miller, meanwhile, has more transportation department credits on his IMDB page than anything else (in that capacity, he's been involved with Gods and Monsters, the Taken movies, and the TV show Ghosts, to name a few), whereas his other writing credits aren't that amazing as they include stuff like Ice Spiders and Swamp Shark. According to his IMDB page, his dream is to work on a Godzilla movie one day, and to that, all I can say is, "Well, good luck with that."

The director, Griff Furst (credited as G.E. Furst), actually works mostly as an actor, appearing in shows like several of the CSI series and Sleepy Hollow, and movies such as Green Lantern, Grudge Match, Terminator: Genisys, The Founder, and The Magnificent Seven. Like the screenwriters, the rest of his directing filmography is pretty dire, as it includes Asylum mockbusters Universal Soldiers and I Am Omega, 100 Million BC, Wolvesbayne, Lake Placid 3, the aforementioned Swamp Shark, Ghost Shark, Trailer Park Shark, and Nightmare Shark (which he co-directed with his brother, Nathan, who also did the music for this and many of Griff's movies). Mask Maker, which he wrote the screenplay for, along with Miller, may have a pretty low IMDB rating at 4.6, but it's actually better than all of those movies. Furst's best-rated film there, however, is a 2010 comedy that I've never heard of called Movin' In.

While far from the best, the young actors in this film are acceptable, if nothing else, and aren't that annoying or loathsome, for the most part. The two leads, Jennifer (Nikki Deloach) and Evan (Stephen Colletti), are especially typical of the kinds of slasher movie protagonists you tended to get during this point in the subgenre's history: good-looking and decent college students, but with rather bland personalities. Rather than being just sex-obsessed horndogs, like most of the cannon fodder you tend to get in these flicks (including their own friends), the two of them 

have more of a nicely playful, cute sort of relationship, and are attempting to make a life for themselves. While Jennifer is initially not happy when Evan takes her out into the Louisiana countryside to the old, rundown Tucker house, and is even more incensed when he says he bought it, intending for the two of them to live there, when he explains how he not only got it for the reasonably low price of $10,000, but that it includes forty acres worth of land, and he plans on fixing it up in order to flip it and use that money to pay off their student loans and get married, she decides to go along with it. She's still not thrilled about the place having crappy cellphone service, as well as being rundown, with no electricity, but when they take a look inside and explore, she becomes fascinated with that they find. Still, she's initially not too keen on staying there that night, but Evan talks her into it. While they're asleep, she's woken up by a loud sound downstairs and goes to investigate but doesn't find anything; unbeknownst to her, she's being watched the whole time. The next day, when she and Evan go into town, they realize that the locals aren't fond of the Tucker place, especially Mr. Peck. Though Jennifer is happy when their friends come up to party and help with the remodeling, she starts to feel uncomfortable when she finds the old diary and reads about Lydia and Leonard, learning of the latter's hideous scalp infection. And when she and her friend Annette go back into town the next day, Jennifer meets with Peck, who tells her the insane story of the house, as well as his own part in it. As horrified and put off as she is, after she and Hillary return to the house, Jennifer soon learns it's very true when she has to fight the undead Leonard, who's killed all of her friends by this point.

Aside from being the one who found and bought the house, Evan's biggest part in the story is that he unintentionally allows Leonard to come back from the dead, when he removes a staff from his grave that was seemingly keeping him buried. Later, when he, Mike, and Ken are exploring the property and he leads them over to that spot, he finds that there's now an enormous depression in the soil. While he finds it weird, he asks the guys not to tell the girls, as he doesn't want to freak them out. That night, Evan gets really drunk during the party they have and Jennifer 

has to put him to bed. Unbeknownst to either of them, Ken and Hillary are brutally murdered during the night, and the next day, while Jennifer and Annette are in town, Evan and Mike run afoul of Leonard. In the end, while Evan fares better against the killer than the other guys, he makes some typical horror movie dumb decisions that results in his getting badly wounded. He's later killed right in front of Jennifer, when Leonard chops his head and puts on his face. Jennifer herself, meanwhile, doesn't have that great of an ending, either, as we'll get into.

Like I said, Jennifer and Evan's four friends are typical slasher fodder. My personal favorite is probably Mike (Ross Britz), as he comes off as a laid back, fun-loving jokester of a guy, but he's also good with fixing electric problems. At one point, when the three of them are looking around down in the basement, he scares the crap out of Evan and Ken by flinging a scarecrow at them. However, when he's later killed down in the basement by Leonard, this prompts Evan to go search for him, thinking that he's just playing another prank. He also has a fairly gross and crude sense of humor; when Evan says there was a raunchy smell when he pulled the staff out of Leonard's grave, Mike comments, "Well, sometimes when I pull it out, there's a raunchy smell, too." He also talks about how, when he was a teenager, he buried some weed in his mother's rose garden, only for his dog (Maggie) to dig it up... and Evan then notes that that was his weed. Regardless, Mike adds, "Fuck, I learned my lesson: never hide the kush in the bush." And when Ken and Hillary go off to have sex in the barn, Mike comments, "Watch out for the automatic milking machine. It sticks." Speaking of which, while both he and Annette insist that, though they had a fling a long time ago, they're not interested in each other now, it isn't long before you see them having sex in the barn as well.

Ken (A.J. Allegra) is kind of a brainy guy, but all that intelligence comes down to is investments and ways to make money. No joke, much of his short amount of screentime consists of him suggesting different ways that Evan could profit off the property. Also, when Evan shows them the spot where the staff was, Ken makes a really dumb suggestion that the big pit that's there now could've been dug by some sort of animal, suggesting it was a gopher! Then, when Mike says that he now thinks of Annette as just his "little sister," Ken comments, "So, yeah, you want to fuck your

little sister? You're disgusting." Mike, as he tries to defend himself, finally says, "I'll fuck your little sister, though... She's got big tits for a 14-year old," and Ken retorts, "What?!... She was in a wheelchair." He and Hillary (Mariah Bonner) are the first of the group to die, with the two of them doing some role-playing, speaking in Russian accents, both before and after they have sex (according to her, it's something they do often, as she mentions wearing a Princess Leia slave outfit to really get him going). That's one

of the few memorable things about Hillary: her ability to do foreign accents fairly well. Other than that, she mainly just makes snarky comments about the house and property, as well as a pretty horrific joke, both for the time and especially nowadays. When the girls find a sewing room, Annette (Anabella Casanova) says that they can design their own clothes, and Hillary comments, "Well, I like ten-year olds in China to sew mine." To that, Annette  says, "And you're going to hell," only for Hillary to respond, "You know what they say: Heaven for the weather, Hell for the company." (That's the moment when she does become rather loathsome.) Speaking of Annette, other than that and her being a little more up for what the house has to offer, there's not to say about her. Though she claims she's not going to bang Mike, with the girls even betting on it, she, of course, does. Whether she did it because she actually is still attracted to him or because Hillary offered to split the money with her if she did it is unclear.

One character who is completely unnecessary, except to serve as Leonard's first victim, is this pervy electrician (Joe Chrest) who intentionally scares Evan when he's looking around the small graveyard near the house. He causes Evan to fall and badly scratch his back up, and then, proceeds to act like he's hitting on him. He says, "Scrappy little cub, ain't ya?", and when he shakes Evan's hand when he gets back up, he comments, "One of them sensitive boys, ain't ya? Ain't a thing to be ashamed of. A lotta people like that." Finally, he says, "You know I'm here to turn you on, right?", and when Evan incredulously asks, "What?", he clarifies, "Your power," and points at the name tag on his work coveralls. The whole time, he's smiling in a really skin-crawling manner and breathing a little too heavily for my liking. Evan then points him to the breaker, and as he walks away, he says, "I'll take care of ya. I'll take care of ya good." He even acts like he's making out with the breaker when he's working on it with a screwdriver, saying, "That's my girl," and straining and grunting in a manner that sounds a tad... enthusiastic. Fortunately, he then gets killed.

Among the recognizable genre faces in Mask Maker's cast, the one with the biggest role, and the best actor in the film by far, is Terry Kiser, whom everyone knows from Weekend at Bernie's, but I always think of him as Dr. Crews in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, and he was also in Jeff's first film, From a Whisper to a Scream. Only known as Mr. Peck, he's first seen at the local market, Pluto's World of Goods, where he overhears Jennifer and Evan talking about the Tucker place. He makes it clear he has no love for the property or those who used to live there, and hints at something sinister with how the last of the family died. When the couple leaves, he tells the store's owner, Fred, that he'll deliver the paints they wanted for the remodeling, but he has an ulterior motive for wanting to go out there: "I wanna make sure what was buried stays buried." Ignoring Fred telling him that they dead don't come back, Peck takes the paints out to the house later on, only to immediately bolt when he sees that the staff stuck in Leonard Tucker's grave has been removed. The next day, when Jennifer and Annette go into town, Jennifer runs into Peck out back, where he's butchering a pig. She tells him about finding Lydia Beaumont's diary and he proceeds to tell her everything. He says that Lydia was a witch and, when her son became horribly ill, she abducted Peck's infant child and sacrificed him in a voodoo-style ritual to save Leonard. When he couldn't save his baby, Peck helped lynch Lydia, only for Leonard to try to intervene. Peck then killed and buried him personally. Now, knowing that Leonard has returned from the dead, he tries to warn Jennifer that she needs to leave the house. But because he seems crazy, she runs off in a panic. 

Peck takes matters into his own hands during the third act. While Leonard, having killed everyone else, is stalking Jennifer around the property, Peck sneaks onto it and finds Leonard's empty grave, as well as Evan, who was stabbed with a pitchfork. Stumbling back to his truck, he drives it right through a wooden fence, towards the house, honking his horn. He parks outside and yells out a challenge to Leonard, even honking the horn to try to bait him. When Leonard does come outside, Peck, despite being no match for him physically, doesn't back down. Even when he's 

grabbed by the throat, flung into the mud, and has an axe swung at him, he keeps on talking smack to Leonard, mocking how he's now wearing Evan's flayed face and telling him that he's not afraid of him. He even manages to score a punch to the face, then runs away and baits him to follow. Unfortunately, he gets the axe flung into his back, but even when he collapses to the ground, he manages to reach around, pull it out of his back, and tries to swing it back at Leonard! Though Leonard grabs the axe and tries to 

kill him with it, Jennifer manages to distract him. Then, when Leonard least expects it, Peck comes up and rips his face mask off from behind, and Jennifer impales him through the head with the staff. Sadly, Peck does end up dying from the axe wound, right after he tells Jennifer to burn Leonard's body.

Michael Berryman from The Hills Have Eyes has a small role here as Fred, the owner of the store, its name being a not so subtle reference to his character from that film. While there's not much to say about him, as he's not in the movie that much, it's interesting to see him play a completely straight role for once. He makes Fred come off as just a really nice guy, one who's much more accommodating about Jennifer and Evan buying the Tucker house than Peck. He tells Peck to be quiet when he keeps ranting about the house, especially when he hints at its past. However, he also refuses to tell the couple why Peck hates it so much, saying it's not his place to. He grows concerned about Peck's paranoia and obsession with the house, and shows up there looking for him after Jennifer has learned why he hates it. When she asks Fred what Peck is so afraid of exactly, he simply answers, "The past," then leaves. Unfortunately, he inadvertently causes Jennifer to fail in killing Leonard for good, as he calls the police to look for Peck, and they arrive at the Tucker house in time to stop Jennifer from burning Leonard's body.

Jason London appears briefly at the end of the movie as Arthur Brown, whom Evan had called about appraising the value of the antiques in the Tucker house. Arriving after everyone else is dead and the police are investigating the property, he tells Jennifer that, by his estimates, there's over a $1 million worth within the house. He does offer her a check for the money, but because of the mindset she's in at the moment, she's not willing to sign anything. Brown comes off as understanding and apologizes, saying she can contact him whenever she's ready.

Lydia Beaumont (Lara Grice) is the first character we see, as the movie opens with her bringing the abducted Peck baby back with her to the Tucker house to sacrifice him. A French, possibly Haitian, maid who worked for the family, you find out, through various flashbacks, that her son, Leonard, was the product of an affair she had with Abraham Tucker (Treat Williams). Worried for the boy's safety, Abraham was determined to keep their affair secret, much to Lydia's dismay. What's more, not only did Abraham's wife, Claire (Liann Pattison), know about

the affair and not hide her disdain for Lydia or Leonard, but, according to Lydia's diary, Claire was the one responsible for the nasty infection that rapidly deteriorated and threatened to kill Leonard, as she sliced into his scalp out of pure cruelty. In one flashback, Claire comes out to the barn right after Abraham has finished having sex with Lydia out there. Wielding a rifle, she demands to know where Lydia is, having had enough of both her and Leonard. Finding Lydia hiding in the back, she's just about to

kill her, when Abraham murders her himself. But Lydia's abducting the Peck baby to sacrifice him proved a bridge too far for Abraham. At the beginning of the movie, he bursts into the basement, where she's preparing the ritual, and tries to talk her out of it, warning her that she'll be lynched if she doesn't stop. Unfortunately for both him and the Peck baby, Lydia, by this point, is hellbent on doing anything to save her son and murders Abraham (garroting him, like he did to Claire) before carrying on with the ritual. But then, she's lynched anyway, and Leonard seemingly dies trying to save his mother.

Leonard Tucker is little more than a mixture of both Leatherface and Jason Voorhees, mostly the latter. That inspiration is very clear, in his supposedly being born mentally-defective (I say "supposedly" because there's no proof in his backstory that that was the case), his being deformed as a result of his scalp infection, and especially in his having a mother who would do anything for him. Case in point, her performing the voodoo ritual to presumably heal the infection and save his life. Though she gets shot in the shoulder by Mr. Peck right after she sacrifices his baby, and is then hanged, she was apparently successful, as a supernatural force went into Leonard as he lay on a cot nearby. It seemed to give him an influx of strength he hadn't had in a long time, and he then tried to save Lydia, only to be killed himself in the process. But Mr. Peck impaled him using this staff that was used in the ritual (I think that's what happens; the movie itself makes it hard to tell), and if it's removed from his corpse, he'll return to life, as happens when Evan unknowingly does so decades later. Rising from the grave, Leonard begins picking off everybody he finds on the property to avenge his mother. He also has a habit of ripping off his victims' faces and wearing them as masks, hence the Leatherface angle. His skin disease is also akin to the version of Leatherface in the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its prequel, with his bandaged head and face bringing the latter to mind.

Leonard is played by Jonathan Breck, who, by this point, had played the Creeper in the first two Jeepers, Creepers movies. While it's a pretty thankless role for the most part, requiring him to do little more than stomp around and slaughter people, he does fine with it. He is also very much like Jason in that respect: a big, hulking, grunting brute who slices and dices people with just about anything he can get his hands on, including his hands themselves. Another similarity is how there is some sympathy for Leonard, given how he was the product of an illicit affair, was 

seen as a bastard by everybody other than his parents, and was treated horribly by Claire Tucker, right down to her giving him the scalp wound that would lead to the infection. Not only would said infection progress over time and leave him seemingly bedridden before Lydia performed the ceremony, but, given how Peck tells Jennifer that Leonard was "devil-touched," it seems that others unfairly saw both him and his mother as products of evil. One flashback shows him playing nicely with a little girl named Mary, even 

giving her a flower, only for Claire to come in, break it up, and send Mary away. She then threatens to make Leonard wish he were never born, likely leading into her cutting his scalp. And near the end of the movie, when Jennifer stops Leonard from killing Peck by pretending to be his mother (yeah, we'll get to that), you can hear him sobbing when he walks up and embraces her. Like with Jason, it doesn't excuse him murdering people, but his motives are understandable.

Given how the movie ends with an obvious sequel-bait, I have a feeling the filmmakers were hoping for a franchise, with Leonard becoming a contemporary slasher icon. Well, while sequels may have happened if anyone had actually seen this, I don't know if Leonard would be as well-remembered as some of the others. Not only are his conception and portrayal not that original, but his look is just so-so. I kind of like when he has gauze and bandages wrapped around his head, both in the flashbacks, when they're fresh and bloody (those make think of what Michael Myers 

initially wears in Halloween 4), and old and covered in mud when he's first resurrected, giving him a mummy-like visage. His wearing other people's faces, however, just makes me think of Leatherface, and the face masks themselves, while well-designed by the makeup effects crew and disturbing enough (particularly when he wears Annette's), don't have the same effect as the best of Leatherface's various masks over the decades. I will say, though, that I do like how we never get to see what his deformed face actually looks like, save for an obscured glimpse in a mirror, but we can tell it's not a pretty sight, to say the least.

I'm sure the minute you saw the screenshots, you knew I was eventually going to complain about the movie's look and, guess what? You're right! This is an especially egregious example of that washed out, overly color-corrected visual style that horror movies often had in the mid-to-2000's and into the 2010's. As I've said before, I always trace it back to the success of the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and as much as I love that movie and thought its visuals were unique for the time, it got tiring when just about every

movie you saw kind of looked like that. I know they probably did it here because they felt it would fit with the tone they were doing but, while I can roll with that sometimes, for the most part, I just hate this murky-looking, muted aesthetic. I don't mind the warm, sunny look of the early scene at the college, and some shots of the property around the house during the daytime don't look too bad, but for the most part, once they get to the town and the Tucker house, the movie looks downright ugly. It also goes for sepia tones, some of which virtually look black 

and white, in the flashbacks, and I'm not too big on that aesthetic, either. And besides just being visually unappealing, the murkiness and lack of color, combined with the sometimes kinetic editing and shaky camerawork, can make it hard to make out what's going on in some scenes (hence my confusion as to what happened in the flashback that opens the movie). The camerawork is pretty fair otherwise, with some notable long, sweeping shots and takes here and there, as well as some wide views of the roads and the surrounding countryside, and a nice overhead view of

the house and property in one instance. Also, when Leonard is spying on the college students and flashes back to his past, the transitions from one to the other have a smoothness to them. And there's a short, quickly-edited montage of the characters cleaning and remodeling the house, set to an energetic bit of music, that I kind of like, especially in how it ends on a shot of their hands clinking together some glasses of liquor, then pulling away to reveal the house in the background.

Staying on the visuals, this is also where the movie's cheapness is very apparent. From what I can gather, the budget was just under $2.5 million, but I figured it didn't even make it up to $1 million, considering how bad some of these images look. Not only are a lot of the shots of Jennifer and Evan driving in the latter's jeep obviously done in front of a green screen, but the same goes for them kissing with the sunset in the background when they first opt to stay at the house. Also, some shots of the night sky have been digitally 

augmented in some way, such as a shot of the full moon coming out from behind some clouds, which you see right before Leonard kills Ken. And while the nighttime exteriors actually do look really good, with lots of moonlight and shadow thanks to the full moon, when Jennifer goes downstairs to investigate a loud sound she hears in the middle of the night, she grabs a flashlight, despite it being very well lit in there.

The movie was shot in Lafayette, Louisiana, which I'm guessing is where it's set as well, at least in regards to the state. During Jennifer and Evan's drive to the Tucker house after they leave the college, you see some beauty shots of the state's cities and countryside, like a harbor with a bridge extending across the water, followed by a rural road with forests and fields on either side. The road leading to the house is a virtual tunnel that goes right through the treeline, and when they reach the house, you see that 

it's completely isolated out there, sitting in a big, open field beyond a wooden fence, with thick woods over to the left. There is definitely a beauty to the place, but there's a creepiness as well, with the trees' low-hanging branches (one tree in the yard is where Lydia was hanged) and Evan's discovery of the small graveyard at the edge of the property, where Leonard was originally buried.

The Tucker house itself is a classic type of horror movie setting: a two-story, plantation-style home that's old, rundown, boarded up, and, by all accounts, feels like it should be haunted. As rough as it looks on the outside when Jennifer and Evan first arrive, the inside, despite having a not so nice smell when they open the door, doesn't come off that bad. Obviously, it's dusty and whatnot, and when Jennifer opens up the refrigerator, she gets a nasty surprise in the form of an old, rotted pig's head that's covered in flies, but,

other than that, it has a charm to it in its old-style furniture and valuable antiques. We only see the living room and kitchen on the first floor, and one of the second floor bedrooms during their first night there, but when their friends join them, they explore more of the property. Jennifer, Hillary, and Annette look around the second floor, finding a sewing room, as well as another bedroom, with a wardrobe full of old clothes (including Lydia's), a connecting bathroom containing an old-fashioned tub, and a 

small sitting room, where Jennifer finds Lydia's diary. At the bottom of the stairs leading into the basement, there's a wine cellar, filled with valuable brands of various ages, including, according to Ken, some dating back to the 1860's. This spot also happens to be where Lydia performs the voodoo ritual during the opening. Beneath the stairs is a door that's initially locked, but when Mike later goes down there to fix the power, the door suddenly swings open and inside, he finds a cavernous tunnel full of human bones and skulls, miscellaneous junk, and an old mattress and 

doll, suggesting it's where Leonard was kept isolated when his health began to go downhill. Naturally, it serves as his lair once he's been resurrected. Also on the property is an old barn that sees both a fair amount of sex, in the present and back in the past, and some gruesome deaths, as it's where Abraham killed Claire and where Leonard kills Hillary, then seriously injures Evan. In an overhead shot, you can see that there are other structures that dot the land around the house, but we never learn what they are.

Speaking of the past, I initially figured that those flashbacks took place back in the 1800's or so, given the clothes that the characters wear and the look of what little we see of the house. Even though I know lynchings like what happens to Lydia did happen in small-town America in the first half or so of the 20th century (as they also still do today, unfortunately), her being dragged out of the house and hanged from that tree branch, as well as the townspeople calling her a witch, felt like something you'd expect from the past

century, like around the Civil War. But, when Mr. Peck turns out to have been the man in the flashback whose baby was sacrificed and who killed Leonard, I realized it had to have taken place in like the 40's or 50's. Moreover, Peck specifically says that the Tuckers died off in 1961, so I was very wrong in my assumptions. Still, I'll let you decide if the movie did a bad job in recreating the time period, even in a setting as isolated as this, or if I'm just an idiot.

The only other major location is Pluto's World of Goods in the nearby town. It also happens to be all we see of the town itself, but from what we can make out, this place is the definition of a podunk little speck on the map. More than just a simple convenience store, Pluto's is actually like a big trading post, full of all kinds of curios and antiques (some of which make me think of the stuff you find in the Cracker Barrel gift-shop), as well as practical stuff like paint and drop

cloths. However, the more rural, overly country aspect of the town's nature comes up during the scene where Jennifer talks with Peck about what happened with Lydia and Leonard, as he's out in the back, butchering a pig carcass.

While it is a fair enough movie, the biggest issue with Mask Maker is that it's so derivative and run-of-the-mill. For one, it brings little, if anything, new to the old slasher movie formula. Other than maybe how the two leads actually own the house where much of it takes place, it's the same basic setup we've seen numerous times: a group of hormonal young adults head to an isolated location where they can party and have sex, only to be picked off one by one in gruesome ways. While the Tucker house itself is 

most likely to make you think of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it's really a stand-in for any place in these movies that has a dark past and bad local reputation, like the Myers house or Camp Crystal Lake. Also, like Crazy Ralph in the first two Friday the 13ths, Peck eventually warns Jennifer to get out of there before it's too late. An initial subversion seems to be that our final girl, Jennifer, outsmarts and defeats Leonard despite her not being a virgin (we never see her have sex onscreen but it's very clear that she and 

Evan have long since crossed that threshold), but given how the movie ends, it's actually not. Leonard being a hulking, masked brute who's seemingly unkillable and can only be momentarily defeated, is like a myriad of different slashers. There are also moments where he spies and stalks some unsuspecting victims, only to disappear when they turn and look (he does this when Jennifer is at the clothesline, which unavoidably makes me think of either Halloween or Friday the 13th Part 3). And his undead nature makes him feel very similar to Jason 

in the later Friday the 13ths. In fact, not only is his backstory similar to Jason's, but the filmmakers all but copy a couple of key moments from that franchise. During the climax, Jennifer saves Peck from being killed by putting on one of Lydia's old dresses and pretending to be her. This not only distracts Leonard but, as Jason did in Friday the 13th Part 2, it causes him to actually see his mother in his mind. Moreover, Leonard's "death," where he's impaled through the head and you see his head

slipping down the staff, is similar to Jason's in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. You could also say that one of the characters unwittingly causing him to rise from the grave is like Part VI: Jason Lives, although that's a bit of a broader trope.

As for the other inspiration for Leonard's character, Leatherface, that mostly comes from the look of his house and his literally wearing other people's faces. In fact, despite the movie's title, what Leonard does is basically what Leatherface himself would do in the 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre, where he literally flays off somebody's face (with his bare hands, in Leonard's case) and puts it over his own. Also, since Leonard wears Annette's face during a section of the third act, there is a bit of that hint of transvestism in

Leatherface's character in the original (thankfully, it's not taken to the extreme of The Next Generation). While there aren't as many direct allusions to specific moments in that franchise as there are with Friday the 13th, when Leonard kills Evan, rips his face off, and puts it on, all as Jennifer watches from where she's hiding in the room, it's a lot like in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, where Chrissie watches helplessly as Leatherface, after killing Eric, skins his face, makes it into a mask, and puts it on.

The kills are nothing spectacular, but the gruesome makeup effects do make for some gory slasher movie fun (for the most part). The first kill is actually that of Abraham Tucker, when Lydia garrotes him, and which we also see him do to Claire in another flashback  The first death in the main timeline, the sleazy electrician, happens when Leonard shoves him face-forward while he's fiddling with the breaker box, causing the screwdriver's handle to get jammed into his eye. Ken is killed when Leonard, first, slices his

throat open, then twists his head around (another Jason allusion, specifically to how he killed Axel the coroner in The Final Chapter). Leonard then proceeds to rip his face off, and while you only see this in very quick cuts, it's pretty gruesome, and ends with a close-up of him putting it on his own face. He kills Hillary by slamming her against the wall and stabbing her with some sharp implement (this is another instance where the darkness and editing make it hard to see just what happened). Mike gets an axe to his 

chest while down in the basement, and Leonard adds to his misery by then harshly ripping it back out. And when he confronts Evan shortly afterward, he's wearing Mike's face. Evan himself first gets stabbed in the gut with a pitchfork after being chased by Leonard, but you learn that didn't kill him. Later on, after Leonard has dragged him into his lair, Jennifer realizes that he's still alive. But before she can save him, he's suddenly decapitated. It's obvious that they used some digital effects to carry out that effect, but the buildup is effective enough to where it's still 

pretty shocking when it happens. Annette gets decapitated while in a bathtub, though when it happens, it cuts away to a splash of blood. And when Jennifer finds her headless body just a few minutes later, the editing, again, makes it hard to appreciate the effect (you do get a good look at her blood-covered legs, though). Mr. Peck, as I said, gets an axe in the back, and while he doesn't die from it right away, the shot of him pulling it out looks painful. And despite being a copy of Jason's death 

in The Final Chapter, Leonard getting the staff through his head and then slowly sliding down it when he falls back is still a well done, gruesome effect. Finally, as I alluded to before, the effects work for the flayed off faces that Leonard wears is also well done, with one really disgusting moment being when you see him remove Annette's face and fling it to the floor, near Jennifer, before putting on Evan's. The gross, squishy sounds if him tearing off the faces, placing them over his own, and removing them makes those moments all the more effective.

Thankfully, that moment where Evan's head is lopped off is the only time digital effects are used in any of the kills. There's also a moment where Leonard throws an axe at Jennifer that you can tell involved some digital work. On the whole, though, digital work is only used in those moments where you can tell the actors are in front of a green screen or environmental effects like the clouds passing over the moon in that one shot. And the one example of full-on CGI that I can think of is during the opening, when you see this ethereal force that Lydia summons with her voodoo ceremony waft over towards Leonard and imbue him with life.

As I've said before, it's sometimes hard to make out what's going on in the scenes where Leonard attacks or chases someone. Fortunately, the handful we get during the climax aren't that bad. First, when Evan goes down into the basement to look for Mike, he comes across Leonard, wearing his face, and naturally, he initially thinks it is Mike. It's only when he gets shoved to the floor and Leonard chases him with the axe that Evan realizes the danger he's in. He runs to the locked storm doors, yelling for help, when

Leonard comes at him and swings the axe. Evan then manages to force his way through the doors, doing so hard enough to break the rusty lock. He runs across the property, with Leonard stomping after him. Of course, instead of running to the road, like he should, he runs into the barn and climbs up into the hayloft. Leonard grabs a pitchfork down below and climbs up there after him. As Evan hides amongst a bunch of hay bales, Leonard angrily stabs into them, missing Evan by mere inches each time. When he stabs into 

the hay a third time, he appears to hit something fleshy, and he also hears Evan gasp. He then flings his pitchfork back, but then sees that what he skewered was a burlap sack. Evan suddenly charges out of the hay and tackles him. They both fall through the wall behind Leonard, landing in the soft mud outside of the barn. Evan manages to grab the pitchfork, stabs Leonard with it, and forces him back into the barn, knocking him into the back of an old wagon. But, 

again, as per usual with these kinds of movies, Evan can't just run off. Instead, he has to check to see if Leonard's dead (you can clearly see that he's still breathing as Evan walks towards him). As expected, Leonard knocks him to the ground, rips the pitchfork out of his stomach, then jumps down off the wagon and repeatedly stabs the fork into Evan's midsection. The film then cuts back to the outside, as Jennifer and Annette return from their trip into town.

While Jennifer talks with Fred, Annette goes into the house and heads upstairs, planning on bathing in an old tub she was eyeing before. Finding it already drawn and waiting for her, supposedly by Mike, she slips into the tub. As she lays amid the bubbles, Leonard enters the room, reaches his filthy hands towards her face, and gently rubs his fingers underneath her chin, leaving mud across it (a possible reference to Michael touching Nurse Karen before killing her in Halloween II). Thinking it's Mike, it takes her a second to realize that something's wrong, 

and when she opens her eyes, she sees Leonard standing over her with his axe. She screams (a stock scream, by the way) as he swings and decapitates her. That's when Jennifer comes in downstairs and heads up there, looking for Annette, only to find her headless body in the tub. Outside, Mr. Peck wanders the property, finding evidence of Leonard's resurrection and subsequent killing spree, while Jennifer is faced with him, as he's now wearing Annette's face. She runs into another room and tries to keep the door closed and locked, only for Leonard to 

smash his arm through and momentarily grab her. She manages to break free and runs through the adjoining rooms, making it back out into the hallway. Seeing it empty, she runs for the stairway and manages to get back to the ground level, only for Leonard to cut her off before she can escape. He grabs at her but she manages to fight him, causing him to drop his axe, and runs for the nearest door, only to find it locked. With no other recourse, she runs for the door leading down to the basement, right as Leonard throws the 

axe at her. It misses and sticks into the wall, as Jennifer tumbles down the basement steps, injuring her leg when she hits the bottom. Not stalling, she manages to crawl along the floor and, seeing an open window, then hearing Leonard coming down after her, she quickly crawls into the corridor leading to his lair. When he comes down into the basement, he assumes that she went out said window. Outside, Peck finds Evan in the barn, seemingly dead, and rushes back to his truck, while Leonard prowls the grounds, looking for Jennifer. 

Jennifer, meanwhile, manages to wrap her injured leg, then makes her way over to an old table, looking for something to defend herself with. She finds an old picture of Lydia and Leonard as a child, and realizes who the killer is. Hearing something in the next room, she quickly hides within a mass of straw on the floor. Leonard comes in, dragging along Evan's body, which he unknowingly drops right in front of her. Looking over the table, Leonard seems to realize that somebody's been down there, as things are out of place. After looking around the room but seeing no 

one, he then grabs his axe, and also picks up a mirror that's shaped like a cross, looking at his reflection. Outside, Peck makes it back to his truck and drives it across the property. Leaning on the horn, he smashes through the wooden fence, heading towards the house. Leonard hears the horn, then drops the mirror and heads upstairs, carrying his axe. Jennifer comes out of hiding and looks out the open window to see Peck in the yard, challenging Leonard. She then hears a moan and realizes Evan isn't dead. She tries to get 

him to his feet, but only manages to lift him up against the table's leg. A door slams upstairs and she's forced to hide again, knowing Leonard is coming back. When Leonard enters the room again, Evan slowly regains consciousness and sees Jennifer hiding in the hay across from him. They look at each other, with Evan just managing to smile, when Leonard suddenly lops his head off. Picking his head up and holding it, he rips the face off, then removes Annette's face and tosses it aside, puts on Evan's, and storms back upstairs, going to confront Peck. Once he's gone, Jennifer murmurs, "I'm sending you back to hell, motherfucker."

After honking the horn and yelling at him, Peck stomps over to the storm doors, armed with his own weapon. When he gets there, Leonard grabs and lifts him up by the throat, then tosses him into the mud. Despite this, Peck gets to his feet, stumbles back to the front of his truck, then turns around and not only faces Leonard as he comes stomping in, but also mocks him. Leonard swings the axe but misses and gets the truck's hood. Pulling it out, he goes to swing it again, only for Peck to score a punch to his "face." As Leonard slowly turns his head back around after 

the hit, Peck runs, taunting and baiting him to chase him. He runs far ahead, only for Leonard to throw the axe and get him in the back. Despite collapsing from this, Peck manages to reach around and pull the axe out. Leonard stands over him and Peck goes for a swing, only for Leonard to grab the handle and yank it out of his hands. He's just about to bring the axe down onto him, when Jennifer appears on the porch, dressed up as and pretending to be Lydia. She tells Leonard to let Peck go, and he drops the axe and walks over to her, seeing her as Lydia in his mind.

When he reaches her, he goes to embrace her, and that's when Jennifer grabs and pushes him back, giving Peck the opportunity to come up behind Leonard and rip Evan's face off him. Leonard elbows him in the face, making him fall back onto the ground, when Jennifer grabs the staff and stabs him right through the eye. He falls back, impaling himself further onto it, as Peck crawls out of the way of his body. Jennifer then yanks the staff out and stabs him in the torso, seemingly finishing him off. She goes to 

try to get Peck some help, but he warns her to burn Leonard's body, before expiring. She runs to the barn, grabs a gasoline can, as well as finds Hillary's body, then runs back and pours the gasoline all over Leonard... when she's stopped by the police, whom Fred called out of concern for Peck's whereabouts.

When the police allow Jennifer to go, the sheriff, seeing Leonard's body being taken away, demands that he placed in a body bag and removes the staff, which is still sticking out of him. Elsewhere, Jennifer pulls over onto the side of the road and breaks down crying, as the realization that she's lost all of her friends finally hits her. A police car pulls up behind her and she tries to compose herself, as the "officer" gets out and walks up alongside the driver's side. Naturally, it turns out to be Leonard, wearing both the sheriff's face and uniform (and like Michael Myers, 

he somehow knows how to drive a car, despite having had no experience with it whatsoever). Before she can react, he grabs and snaps her neck, then carries her over to the police car, puts her body in the backseat, and drives away, ending the movie. Though I was initially shocked when our final girl ended up dying after all, once it'd worn off, a major feeling of annoyed fatigue set in, as I thought, "Really? You're trying to sequel-bait me? That's pretty lame." And obviously, it went nowhere.

As I said, Nathan Furst, director Griff Furst's brother, works as a composer and has done the music for many of his brother's films, including this one. And make no mistake, the music score is one of its better elements, especially the main theme, which is a soft piano theme that, while maybe a bit generic, is still haunting and somber enough to give it a fairly creepy atmosphere. The score also has some variety, with some low, menacing themes at some points, tragic, emotional ones in others, and even full on screeching hard rock when Leonard pursues Evan out of the basement and across the property. And the montage of the group cleaning and remodeling the house is set to this very kinetic, percussive piece of music that you only hear in that one instance. Not all of the music is great, though. There's some stereotypical blue grass-style, banjo music that you hear when the characters drive into town (one of which is stock music I've heard in numerous low-rent shows and movies), and the ending is done to this horrendous heavy metal music, which I can't stand.

When compared with some of the junk we've looked at during the last week or so, Mask Maker looks pretty good in comparison. It may be a very typical slasher flick, doing nothing new with the tried and true tropes, and takes maybe too much "inspiration" from some bona fide classics and icons, but I do find it to be an okay time-waster, one that comes with a nice setting for its story, some familiar faces you like to see, with Terry Kiser being a standout, good gore and makeup effects, and a pretty music score. However, it does suffer from an unappealing visual style, some scenes that are hard to make out, cringe-inducing examples of cheapness, some uninspired, cardboard main characters, a villain who's little more than a combination of Jason Voorhees and Leatherface, and an obvious sequel-bait ending. All in all, it's not awful, and if you're a hardcore slasher fan, you might enjoy it. But, like with so much else that I've talked about this month, now that I've done this review, I doubt I'll watch it again.