Dr. Allan Barnes (Paul Stevens) is working with a troubled man who comes into his office claiming to have murdered a woman due to a mysterious mask in his possession. The doctor doesn’t believe this so the man kills himself but before doing so he mails the doctor the mask. Soon the doctor is curious to try the mask on and then he begins to see the evil visions it offers.

THE MASK is a fairly interesting movie from Canada that has a lot of interesting ideas and some great images but sadly the entire thing is so poorly acted and is so cheaply produced that in the end it comes across as a disappointment. I will admit that I could only watch the movie in 2D so I’m really not sure how well or poorly the 3D effects were.

As for the film itself, as I said the performances in the film really aren’t all that special but what really kills the film is the low-budget and the direction. Whenever the movie isn’t involved in the “mask vision” then there’s really nothing too interesting happening. The entire story is interesting but the majority of the movie happens as characters discuss the mask and its effects and none of them is all that captivating. Another problem is that the editing is so poor that it doesn’t help things either.

Where the film does succeed is in the visions. Again, some of it is poorly staged due to the budget but there are still some pretty interesting stuff that seems to be influenced by some of the movies from Italy including Mario Bava’s BLACK Sunday. The images of the various zombie like creatures are rather effective as are the smoke and skull images. Perhaps their impact were even stronger in 3D. With that said, THE MASK certainly has enough interesting things to make it worth viewing, although the end result should have been better.