Synopsis: Mask Maker (aka Maskerade) follows a young couple who purchases a 19th century plantation home and invites friends up for the weekend to celebrate. As they dig up the mystery surrounding the death of the former residents, it becomes apparent that the plantation home’s former owners have not left, and the unlucky youths suddenly find themselves running for their lives.Obviously inspired mainly by the classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this is a slasher that owes a lot to many more slasher movies... to the point where almost every single thing about this feels derivative. There's just nothing particularly new or inventive about this at all.
The cast and the acting are all pretty decent really. To be rated R, it's pretty tame though. There's a bit of gore, but not a whole lot, and not a lot of nudity either. It could probably easily be PG-13.
Nowadays there are just so many horror remakes I was sort of excited to see a new character and story, but even though it's not a remake it nearly feels like it. The bad guy like to cut people's faces off and wear them after he drops the axe on them... and that's about it. Typical slasher scenes, typical kills, typical cardboard characters. The setting could have been a pretty cool place, an old home out in a remote Texas area (again, see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), but it's not really important or used creatively.
In the end I did enjoy a few of the actors and there is a body count that piles up, so it's not a total loss. Something else positive that I did think stood out was the dialogue between the characters actually felt real and that's sort of unusual nowadays. As a fan of this type of film I had some fun, but if you're not into these you'll want to totally pass on this.
4/10
