Fleshless Phyllis

To paraphrase MST3K, "Every frame of someone in this movie looks like their last known photo".

This looks like something someone would send to the parents of the woman they've clearly kidnapped, skinned the face off of and are now using it in some fucked up cat and mouse game, which is obviously written by James Patterson. Honestly, this thing is...weird? I don't really know how to broach this subject, exactly, cause there's a lot of levels here. On one hand, this appears to be a woman, using a mask, because the hair doesn't look attached to the mask, and yet the hair seems to fit with the mask so extremely well that it makes me question whether it's their actual hair or not. This is a strange mask too because there's nothing inherently creepy about it, outside the general uncanny valleyness of it all. I mean, it's just a face. It's a glossy, slightly inhuman face, but a face nonetheless. Nothing scary, they're even smiling! The details, the wrinkles, the eyebrows? All fairly solid work.

So why does this thing terrify to me to my absolute core?

Is it because it looks like something a serial killer would wear? Perhaps. Is it because it, for whatever reason, somewhat resembles a hollowed out bloodless Pat Sajak? Maybe. Though I guess I don't know if good ol' Pat wears lipstick like this mask does, but hey, more power to him if he does. You go, Sajak. You do you. There's just something genuinely not alright with this to me. I guess it sort of harkens back to my post about using old people as masks, in the sense of just a mask of a human face is weird enough as it is, even those big rubber Nixon masks, exaggerated as they may be (and they're not that much exaggerated, so), but this one really is unsettling, and I think it's because it's so translucent. It just gives it an even eerier vibe than it already would've had just by the act of its existence. I'm not even sure what you would pair this with as a mask for a costume. Are you just exploring with your gender and trying to see how you'd look as a woman? I mean, it's not really a youthful looking mask, and it's not really that attractive of a mask, so I don't know why you'd use this for your gender exploration, but hey, again, more power to you if you are. I just want everyone to be their best selves and be comfortable with their best selves.

This mask though, which I've dubbed Fleshless Phyllis, rips through me to my core. Why does it appear flesh toned in the first photo but then is actually hollow in this one? And apparently the eyes of the wearers actual eyes, but everything about that first picture makes you automatically assume that that's the face of this mask, which only leads to more confusion when you realize that, no, this mask is hollow and empty. Did they tape a face over the mask? Because it still doesn't look like a real face. The entirety of Fleshless Phyllis makes me uneasy, honestly. There's so much that's unexplainable about it that I simply can't even begin to try and analyze it without screaming into the night and committing myself to months of shock therapy just to forget the horrors I have seen.

Fleshless Phyllis is the epitome of nightmarish masks. It's design makes no sense, the way it works makes no sense, and these photos give off less a "I'm having a fun Halloween" vibe and more a "I keep people in my basement" vibe. And while I love any woman who breaks the mold and decides to wear other peoples faces as her own, swallowing their souls and condemning their humanity to the pits of despair for all eternity, even I wouldn't wanna be anywhere near this thing. In fact, if I saw Fleshless Phyllis in the...well, not the flesh, cause that'd just go against her name, but...let's say in person, even though she's clearly more ethereal fear beast than person, I'd likely shit my pants and then die of terror. In that exact order.

Masks are wonderful things. They embody culture and history and allow us to be different people and creatures, and then sometimes, every now and then, something like Fleshless Phyllis comes along and terrifies us all. This is a remarkable mask for how seemingly simple and yet so effectively horrifying it is simultaneously. I treasure that sort of talent. It's just a face, no more, no less. But it proves that even the most human things can sometimes seem inhuman when done up properly, and that I must commend.

Art, even at its darkest, is still art, and that makes it beautiful, even in the case of Fleshless Phyllis.