Episode Recap: The Killer Behind the Mask

Look at these fresh (game) faces! They’ve never been on a Face Off stage before, have never met any of the illustrious, iconic judges, have never sweated out their vital fluids because they only had fifteen minutes to handle their edges and get the headdress to stay on. Oh, the surprises in store for them!

They’re all excited to meet Eryn Krueger-Mekash, Ve Neill, and Rick Baker, and slightly intimidated by the first challenge: to create an alien… based on a cave painting. Scott, who’s there to inspire his kids to work hard and follow their dreams, daubs his amphibious alien with various shades of green. When he goes to lay in the highlights, the color scheme goes off track. Marie, fresh off a win at the prestigious IMATS competition, is inspired by the caveman aspect of the challenge and sets a prominent brow on her alien. Angie, a YouTuber who shares her love and knowledge of makeup with her followers, experiments with a textured sheet of latex and creates an organic crown for her glowing alien.

The work is consistently impressive, but Marie’s paint got muddy, and she is the first to go home. The other artists thank their lucky stars (and their training and experience), take a breath, and get ready for the next challenge: slasher villains! Yaaaayyy! Using a mock newspaper article as an origin story, the artists must create not only the gruesome makeup for the killer, but also the iconic mask, a la Jason and the Texas Chainsaw murderer, behind which they lurk.

Angie’s article tells of a child put into foster care after being held for years by a vodou priest, and as a result pulls pins from her own body to skewer her victims. Scott tries to hide some crazy edges around his bald cap as he builds his Satanic cult survivor. He uses various prosthetics, but the judges note that the final wig he chose did the trick – he needn’t have tortured himself with all that work. Jonathon’s victim-turned-predator lost his family in a stampeding crowd leaving a carnival, therefore, the killer lures his victims in with a flashy and festive guise, then slays them with his true monstrosity.

Again the judges are faced with gorgeous characters, but Jonathon missed the mark somewhat. He was nervous about fabricating the mask, and spent too little time designing and applying the makeup.

That leaves Scott and Angie to create TWO – that’s right TWO – characters in just four hours. Zowie! In the spirit of comic books, they must create an awesome hero and the atrocious villain that is the hero’s polar opposite. Scott envisions any icy cool hero and a fiery villain named Brimstone. Angie goes with the most basic elements: Dark and Light.

Scott paints a gorgeous, subtle color scheme on both of his characters while adding some bold graphic elements to their torsos, but his choice of prosthetics (jaw pieces on the hero’s cheeks, a furrowed brow on an otherwise sexy villain) sets his makeups askew. Angie used her significant knowledge of beauty makeups for a literally luminous hero, and created the illusion of spreading darkness on her villain. As Ve says, any of these four could be in an X-Men movie, but Angie’s work had that extra finesse that put her over the top. She’s this week’s winner!