"Unmasked Part 25" has got a great premise. The London-lensed film concerns Jackson, an immortal slasher killer who hides his hideously deformed face behind a hockey mask. However, Jackson is tired of the slasher game. Brutally murdering partying, half-naked teenagers has lost its zeal. He's ready to settle down, find someone who loves him for who he is inside. The film can be summed up as "What if Jason had a midlife crisis?" It's honestly the kind of story I would have loved as a teenager, when I spent a lot of time writing jokey, splatstick stories about horror archetypes in non-horror scenarios.
Disappointingly, "Unmasked Part 25" doesn't live up to its fantastic concept. The movie has got exactly three great scenes in it. After executing a house of twenty-something partiers, the killer comes upon a blind woman. She starts talking to him, showing no fear, taking him back to her apartment, coaxing him out of his grunting, speechless mindset. At first, a high-pitched, British accent coming from behind a hockey mask is rather amusing. That first encounter between the two, where they bond over their mutual status as outcast, Jackson occasionally dropping hints about his particular life-style, is good stuff. If the movie had cut off at the twenty minute point, I would be lift with a smile on my face.
Instead, "Unmasked Part 25" rolls on. Jackson talks a lot. He goes on about his childhood with his abusive father, and years in the woods around his camp. He returns home to his dad, who tries to convince him he's only a monster, even though Jackson thinks he's in love. He complains about his problems to his dad and girlfriend. A scene where he winds up in a bar with some drunk jerks drags terribly. By playing the maniac's existential ennui a little too straight, "Unmasked Part 25" becomes a slog. I would hope, if he could talk and reflect on his life, Jason Voorhees wouldn't be this much of a whiny baby.
The romantic subplot doesn't quite work either. A scene of Shirley and Jackson out for a stroll through town ends with them in a Halloween costume shop. I think there's supposes to be jokes there but the sequence is deafeningly dour. We get a peak into the killer's sex life and learn that his girlfriend is into BDSM, a frankly baffling scene. The script seems to think the premise of "a Jason expy who can't stand to tie his girlfriend up" is enough to support a protracted, extended sequence. There's even a long moment of the guy just walking around London, not doing much.
"Unmasked Part 25" tries to have it both ways. As Friday the 13th rolls around, Jackson is compelled to go on a murderous spree, finding a troupe of drunken Shakespearean actors to slash through. (Rather perversely, the film credits Shakespeare as a screenwriter.) The movie briefly comes alive again as Jackson calls his victims out for partaking in horror clichés as he offs them. The brief moment of the masked killer sighing despondently, surrounded by mangled corpses, gets a bigger laugh then the entire rest of the film. Once again, the movie goes moody and self-serious for the last scene. It's not Jackson's brutal murders that make him unlikable but instead his constant whining.
"Unmasked Part 25" will test the patience of most slasher fans. By the standards of grainy VHS-tape low budget slasherdom, the gore is actually quite good. Looking at the film, you can see a much wittier, insightful, and far more consistent in there somewhere. Alas.
Disappointingly, "Unmasked Part 25" doesn't live up to its fantastic concept. The movie has got exactly three great scenes in it. After executing a house of twenty-something partiers, the killer comes upon a blind woman. She starts talking to him, showing no fear, taking him back to her apartment, coaxing him out of his grunting, speechless mindset. At first, a high-pitched, British accent coming from behind a hockey mask is rather amusing. That first encounter between the two, where they bond over their mutual status as outcast, Jackson occasionally dropping hints about his particular life-style, is good stuff. If the movie had cut off at the twenty minute point, I would be lift with a smile on my face.
Instead, "Unmasked Part 25" rolls on. Jackson talks a lot. He goes on about his childhood with his abusive father, and years in the woods around his camp. He returns home to his dad, who tries to convince him he's only a monster, even though Jackson thinks he's in love. He complains about his problems to his dad and girlfriend. A scene where he winds up in a bar with some drunk jerks drags terribly. By playing the maniac's existential ennui a little too straight, "Unmasked Part 25" becomes a slog. I would hope, if he could talk and reflect on his life, Jason Voorhees wouldn't be this much of a whiny baby.
The romantic subplot doesn't quite work either. A scene of Shirley and Jackson out for a stroll through town ends with them in a Halloween costume shop. I think there's supposes to be jokes there but the sequence is deafeningly dour. We get a peak into the killer's sex life and learn that his girlfriend is into BDSM, a frankly baffling scene. The script seems to think the premise of "a Jason expy who can't stand to tie his girlfriend up" is enough to support a protracted, extended sequence. There's even a long moment of the guy just walking around London, not doing much.
"Unmasked Part 25" tries to have it both ways. As Friday the 13th rolls around, Jackson is compelled to go on a murderous spree, finding a troupe of drunken Shakespearean actors to slash through. (Rather perversely, the film credits Shakespeare as a screenwriter.) The movie briefly comes alive again as Jackson calls his victims out for partaking in horror clichés as he offs them. The brief moment of the masked killer sighing despondently, surrounded by mangled corpses, gets a bigger laugh then the entire rest of the film. Once again, the movie goes moody and self-serious for the last scene. It's not Jackson's brutal murders that make him unlikable but instead his constant whining.
"Unmasked Part 25" will test the patience of most slasher fans. By the standards of grainy VHS-tape low budget slasherdom, the gore is actually quite good. Looking at the film, you can see a much wittier, insightful, and far more consistent in there somewhere. Alas.