Mask Maker and a Gorehound's Delight: A Movie Review

*Here be some spoilers.

Director: Griff Furst.

Writer: Eric Miller and Griff Furst.

Tagline: "Dying is the easy part."

Lafayette, Louisiana is continuing to develop an indie film making scene, with Active Entertainment and Bullet Films debuting one of their first slashers this year. The title is Mask Maker, previously Maskerade. Set in farmland, a manor house holds unimagined voodoo curses and one killer with a serious identity problem. He compensates for a disfigured face with the peeled grimaces of others. Not for the squeamish, Mask Maker's best qualities are its hoodoo mythos, the excellent acting, and some exceptionally gory scenes.

A young child is accidentally cut along the top of the skull and soon, infection sets into the wound. Nothing will heal this injury, until his mother turns to a voodoo spell. The stumbling block comes about when she has to sacrifice animals and later humans to keep her son alive. This does not make the local townsfolk happy. But when the son is "devil-touched" (Mask), there is no way of undoing the curse. The mythos, in which the writing is set, creates for much of the tension, while some young twenty-somethings courageously raise their characters above simple fodder.

The main characters and couple, Jennifer (Nikki Deloach) and Evan (Stephen Colleti), are well performed and their romance is believable. Other minor characters like Annette (Anabella Casanova), Mike (Ross Britz), Hillary (Mariah Bonner) and Ken (A.J. Allegra) are given enough scream time to develop an angle or two. As well, flashbacks help develop the killer named Leonard, with Jonathan Breck (Jeepers Creepers) developing the physicality of his character with dramatic effect. Each of the actors puts their best into the role, until only one character remains.

Those not surviving into the sequel are quickly disemboweled by pitchfork, decapitated by axe, or slashed to former figures of themselves. Special effects guru Blane Granstaff creates a gorehound's delight, with nothing visually held back for the faint of heart.

Of course curses never end and while this is a horror genred film, the ending is one of tragedy. There are no happy endings here, with Bullet Films possibly teasing a sequel. With ten films already made for the Halloween series, it is obvious that there is a devout viewing audience of the slasher film.

Before ending, a couple film elements stood out as being strange. Jason London is in the title credits, but his actual screen time is less than five minutes. His appearance and usage seemed wasted. However, indie film budgets are often limiting. Also, how did the killer tear through a dozen emergency workers to catch up with one of the female protagonists in only a few minutes? Plot holes are few in Mask Maker, but these foibles stood out, near the conclusion.

Mask Maker has been released on DVD by Active Entertainment since April 12th. This film is for those who love the horror sub-genre of slashers. Full of brutal interactions between a devil possessed freak and innocent victims, this film proudly puts its foot in the macabre. The foot prints left behind are dripping wet and very bloody.

Overall: 6.75 out of 10 (good acting, good mythos, did not step out of the mold very much, a strange ending and in the end, entertaining).

Mask Maker can be found on Facebook:

Mask Maker on FB

The Mask Maker Homepage:

Mask Maker's Official Website

Mask Maker at Active Entertainment:

Mask Maker at Active

A tense time for the bloodthirsty:



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Posted in: 2011,active entertainment,bullet films,curses,eric miller,face peeler,griff furst,louisiana,mask maker,maskerade,movie review,serial killer,tragedy,voodoo