EVIL DEAD BURN Director Wants to Bring THE MASK Back With a Brutal Horror Twist
Before Jim Carrey turned The Mask into one of the biggest comedy hits of the 1990s, the character was headed down a much darker path. A lot of fans don't realize the movie almost became a full-on horror film, and now that idea is making its way back into the conversation thanks to Evil Dead Burn director Sébastien Vaniček.
If Vaniček gets his way, The Mask could someday return to theaters looking a whole lot more like the original Dark Horse Comics than the cartoonish, family friendly movie audiences know and love.
It's easy to forget that New Line Cinema originally had very different plans for the property. The studio had picked up the comic hoping it could become the next horror icon in the vein of Freddy Krueger. The source material certainly leaned in that direction, packed with brutal violence, dark humor, and plenty of bloodshed.
Director Chuck Russell, who helmed the 1994 film, fought hard to steer the project away from horror and toward comedy. Looking back on the creative battle in 2017, Russell explained:
“It’s a great example of really fighting for your vision in a film. We changed it from a horror film into a comedy. It was originally conceived as being a horror film. That was a real battle. New Line wanted a new kind of Freddy movie.”
Russell went on to explain why he felt that approach would've been too familiar. “I had seen the same original Mask comic they ended up buying, and I thought, ‘That’s really cool, but it’s too derivative of Freddy Krueger.’
“He would put on the mask and kill people. And have one-liners. It was a really cool, splatterpunk, black and white comic. They’ve redone the comics to be more like my movie, but the original comics were really cool, dark and scary. But I knew, as a film, it would be very reminiscent of Freddy Krueger.”
Instead, Russell's vision gave us the wildly energetic comedy starring Carrey and Cameron Diaz, creating one of the actor's most memorable performances and launching a franchise that took a very different path than the comics ever did.
Now, decades later, Vaniček is interested in taking the character back to its roots. The Evil Dead Burn director took part in a Reddit AMA where a fan asked which existing franchise he'd love to tackle next.
His answer was simple: “I think I would dig into The Mask, but make it closer to the comic books.” He followed that up with an explanation that should get horror fans paying attention: “The comic books are actually very, very violent and dark.”
It's an interesting idea because most moviegoers only know The Mask as a fast-paced comedy filled with cartoon physics, outrageous gags, and Carrey's unforgettable performance.
The original comics are a completely different beast. The wearer of the mystical mask doesn't just prank people. They become a violent, nearly unstoppable force who dishes out gruesome punishment with a twisted sense of humor.
With horror adaptations becoming increasingly faithful to their source material, a comic-accurate version of The Mask doesn't seem nearly as far-fetched as it once did. Whether a studio would actually greenlight such a drastic reinvention is another question entirely, but it's certainly an intriguing pitch.
I'd absolutely love to see what Vaniček could do with that concept. A horror version of The Mask has been sitting there since the character was first created, and after all these years, it might finally be time to let that nightmare smile return to the big screen.