Leslie Vernon Returns as Directors Announce Behind the Mask Sequel

Twenty years ago, a slasher aficionado invited a camera crew to follow him as he prepared for his killing season. With the infectious glee of a true believer, Leslie Vernon (Nathan Baesel) walks a young journalist named Taylor (Angela Goethals) through his plan to create a legend, choose a survivor girl (Kate Lang Johnson), and go on a killing spree. He’ll follow her to a dilapidated farmhouse she is visiting with her friends, and there he’ll kill them like Freddy, Jason, Michael, and the other great slashers of yore.

What actually happens has long thrilled horror fans, leaving the faithful hungry for more and disappointed that Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon was a standalone effort and not a franchise starter. Until now.

“My three favorite words right now: Leslie Vernon returns,” writer David J. Stieve triumphantly tells Den of Geek.

Directed by Scott Glosserman from a script that he co-wrote with Stieve, 2006’s Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon was a unique take on the meta-slasher. Part mockumentary, in which Vernon explicitly explains tricks like how to disappear when his target Kelly turns around, or how to encourage his victim to choose faulty weapons, and part straightforward slasher, the film both deconstructed and celebrated the tropes that defined Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween.

Despite his high-profile coming out party, Leslie disappeared at the end of Behind the Mask, never to be seen on-screen again—no matter how hard his creators endeavored to change that over the years.

“We tried and tried, we’ve iterated and changed, coming up with stuff that just wasn’t right for the time,” Glosserman admits.

Stieve adds, “We’ve been trying to keep pace with the genre, but the sand kept moving under our feet.”

Apropos of their co-writing relationship, Glosserman picks up on Stieve’s metaphor and continues: “The sand keeps changing, especially with the self-referential part of it all. There have been any number of self-referential films across genres, and it can feel tired going back to the same well, even though the first film wasn’t proceeded by much.

“After us, though, the floodgates really opened because horror-comedy reflects the zeitgeist of its age. It’s not intentional, it’s not as though we had anything to do with it. But there was a moment that we had to ask ourselves ‘how do we come back to self-referential horror-comedy?’ or consider if it is too saturated.”

And yet, despite those fears, the duo knew they couldn’t forget about Leslie; in part because of the demand from fans who love Behind the Mask but also because they kept getting ideas for new scenarios.

“Scott and I started talking about how to continue the story, even when we were back on set in Portland, shooting the first one,” says Stieve. “We’d be beating out scenes in the middle of the night in a hotel room and realize that we just had a good idea for a sequel. And its just evolved throughout the years. It finally feels like everything has coalesced. Leslie returning now feels like it’s taken a long time, but we’ve earned it. The story and the metaphor has presented itself in a way that we can’t ignore.”

What is that story and metaphor? Unlike their main character, the duo aren’t ready to show the press what they’re doing before it happens just yet. But they can say that the original cast and crew are back for the sequel. And they can also tell us that Leslie has had to struggle with the changing times—especially since, these days, he doesn’t have to coerce a camera crew to get on people’s screens like he did in 2006.

“The most challenging thing about the movie isn’t just the mise-en-scène of how to portray the world in the film, but to actually shoot the movie and get that mixed media contrast that we got the first time,” Glosserman admits. “Then we had very simple hard lines when we were one reality and then another.”

Stieve explains, “In the meta version of it, Leslie is certainly aware of shortened attention spans and shock tolerance. All of that will factor into his planning and execution—no pun intended.”

One thing that hasn’t changed is Leslie’s love of the classics, even if the rest of the world has moved on from his favorite subgenre. Behind the Mask was a love letter to the ’80s slasher, and the sequel will be too.

“Throughout the ’00s you had torture porn, found footage, J-horror, and then there were sequels and prequels and remakes,” Glosserman says. “And back in 2007, 2008, 2009, during our first iterations of the Leslie Vernon sequel, we were really trying to keep up with the zeitgeist. But there’s just so much to cover. And this guy, at his core, he’s a slasher. And that raises a question: if you’re someone who’s used to your ways, how do you keep up with what the younger people are doing? Or do you stick with what you know? That alone presents a conflict. And it will be interesting to see where we, as real people, have come over the past 20 years. So the sequel will not only reflect the conventions and archetypes of horror, but also our own lived experience.”

According to Stieve, that lived experience does mean that he and Glosserman have to be honest about the type of horror they love best: “For Scott and I, ’80s horror is our core, that’s the DNA,” he admits. “So for me, it’s been a real process of trying to overcome my resistances to what slasher horror has become. I mean, I respect and admire the work, even when it’s not my taste, and I don’t want to be yelling at the kids to get off my lawn. But there’s part of me that wants to hold onto that feeling of ’80s and ’90s horror. But you can’t, and Leslie as a character can’t either.”

In the first movie, that love of ’80s and ’90s horror led to cameos from legends such as Robert Englund and Kane Hodder. Will more greats show up in the sequel?

“There’s going to be a crowdfunding component to this, because we want the horror community to come along with us and ‘buy’ into what we’re doing. So we’ll have stretch goals, and some of them will be cameo reveals,” teases Glosserman.

Until then, Glosserman and Stieve are just happy that they’ve had such fan support to carry them through 20 years of Behind the Mask.

“Twenty years is a huge landmark, especially for the unbelievable fan support we’ve been shown,” Stieve declares. “We have to give the fans something. If we miss this window, what are we doing out here?”

That’s a fitting sentiment for Stieve and Glosserman to take as they begin production on the Behind the Mask sequel. Because Leslie Vernon may be a psychopathic murderer. But first and foremost, he’s a fan.

The post Leslie Vernon Returns as Directors Announce Behind the Mask Sequel appeared first on Den of Geek.