Skull: The Mask
Written & Directed by Armando Fonseca & Kapel Furman

I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time! If you’ve been following me for any length of time then you may know of my love for slasher movies, as long ago these formulaic forays into violence and gore have wormed their way into my heart. So when I heard about a slasher movie coming out of Brazil, a country who I don’t believe I’ve watched a movie from before, I got excited. When I heard that this movie was a gory extravaganza and tribute to the over-the-top slashers of yesteryear, I was there. Now that Skull: The Mask has come stateside and I finally got the chance to see it, did it live up to the hype? Yes! Well, mostly.

I Know You Want To Get To The Gore But This Stuff Is Important.

After an ancient and dangerous artifact is unearthed by a shady antique dealer and subsequently disappears, a trio of people are set on a collision course in a race against time to stop the return of a powerful demonic force. Beatriz Obdias, a police officer with a dark and mysterious past, is put in charge of investigating this missing item, finding herself caught in a conspiracy dating back decades. Elsewhere, a down on his luck man, Manco, with an obligation to protect this artifact from falling into the wrong hands, embarks on his own mission to locate the missing item. Both of these plans are complicated by the artifact they’re searching for taking over a rather beefy man, setting off a wave of carnage across São Paulo.

Seriously, I Need To Talk About This Before I Talk about The Effects.

One of the most important things to get across about Skull: The Mask as quickly as I possibly can is that this is definitely a B-movie (and not just because it was made in Brazil ba dum tish). If you go in expecting a hyper polished and slick modern horror you’ll be in for a rude awakening because everything has an awkwardness that a lot of B-movies have. That’s most apparent in two parts of the movie for me, the acting and the dialogue, which may be partially due to translation issues but I don’t speak Portuguese so I can’t comment on that, unfortunately. But I can say that the performances in this movie sometimes have some issues, usually related more to body language and movement where there are some scenes, like one where Detective Obdias is confronted in a restaurant. She pulls out her gun, but the way she does it is slow and awkward, like the actress isn’t exactly sure what she’s supposed to be doing. That could even be a difficulty in editing, really, but there are scenes like that peppered across the movie and it can be distracting. The dialogue is straightforward, but it can be difficult to follow because there is a surprising amount of plot to a movie with a simple story. Here’s the thing though, none of that matters.

Alright, Now It Is Time To Talk About The Gore. Which Is Great.

The reason you, or me or anyone, gave Skull: The Mask a chance is because all the early hype that surrounded the movie talked about how amazing the gore effects were, and they were all right. When Skull: The Mask gets into the spirit as a proper slasher movie, it becomes something special, gleefully diving into impressively done practical gore effects and kills imaginative enough to create some memorable death scenes. I hate being part of the crowd that endlessly complains about CGI gore, but this is just another example of how taking the time and putting in the effort to make as much of the effects as you can practical gives so much more weight and meaning than just shoving obvious CGI blood and guts at the screen. More than just the effects, there’s an energy to the sequences with the slasher that the rest of Skull: The Mask doesn’t quite have, maybe because it’s trying to be too many things at once.

Tone Gets A Little Messy – Much Like The Copious Amounts Of Gore.

It is difficult to keep a consistent tone and pace when half of your supernatural slasher film is about a guy trying to prevent the apocalypse (I think that was what was happening, it was a little unclear.) and the other half is a gritty police story about corruption and police brutality in a country where being a police officer doesn’t come with a ton of perks. I couldn’t really tell you why these very different plotlines are both in the same movie, perhaps as an attempt to ground the movie, but why would you want to do that when the opening of your film features a masked man martial arts battling his way through a Nazi base in South America? There’s a level of camp and self-awareness that I assumed Skull: The Mask was going to embrace the whole time, and I was happy with that because that’s when everything works here. It’s usually a bit disappointing when the story slows down for the investigation, but Detective Obdias is a good character so I can let that slide.

You Already Know Whether Or Not Skull: The Mask Is For You. And I Quite Liked It.

Skull: The Mask is a movie I wish I had seen a decade ago. I can’t imagine a better situation for watching this movie than sitting in a college dorm with some friends, drinking cheap booze, and cheering every time something wild happens. This isn’t the kind of movie you watch to analyze its themes, become attached to its deep characters, or fall into the intricacies of its plot. You watch this movie for one reason alone: it’s awesome. If you’re a fan of slasher movies, B-movies, or even just a gorehound, you cannot miss Skull: The Mask. General audiences may not get this, but not everything is for general audiences, and Skull: The Mask is proudly gruesome, and that warms my heart.