Maniac (2012) Review
Posted by Stephen Lambrechts - 23/12/2012
☆☆☆☆☆
When pushed to think of the most notorious and grimy film in the illustrious pantheon of sleaze-hound horror classics, William Lustig’s 1980 slasher Maniac would have to rank somewhere at the top. It’s a film born of the long-gone 42nd Street era of fleapit grindhouses; the kind that skeevy weirdos would frequent at all hours of the night, along with an assortment of perverts, bums, junkies and adventurous youths trying to freak the shit out of their girlfriends. In other words, it’s the kind of film that this site is built on. It’s also the last film you’d expect to receive the modern day remake treatment. Thankfully, producers Thomas Langmann (Best Picture Oscar winner for The Artist), Alexandre Aja (director of High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes remake) and director Franck Khalfoun (director of P2) have brought us a film that’s as far away from the typical Platinum Dunes-style horror remake as you could possibly imagine.
Elijah Wood plays Frank, a shy man whose hobbies include restoring old mannequins, online dating, and the vicious stalking, murdering and scalping of women. He is an absolute psychopath; a man who at one moment is able to interact with people on a social and emotional level, but then suffers from uncontrollable psychotic breaks the next. Frank’s traumatic childhood has caused his mommy-issues to manifest themselves as excruciating headaches, and the only way he can relieve them is by going out on the town and finding a new woman to destroy. He then brings his victims’ scalps home, staples them to his mannequins and talks to them as if they were alive. And you thought ‘bronies’ were creepy.
Frank’s world is thrown out of order when he meets Anna (Nora Arnezeder), a pretty French artist with an interest in photographing mannequins. The two hit it off, and for the first time, Frank tries to control himself around a woman. But how long will he be able to conceal his true homicidal nature?
The original version of this story was already horrifying enough, but Khalfoun’s decision to shoot almost the entire film from the killer’s first-person perspective raises the bar for this kind of horror in a massive way. We see everything through Frank’s eyes. We begin to feel like we’re the ones stalking these victims; like we’re complicit in these murders. This technique also allows us to experience his hallucinations, seeing his mannequin collection come to life first-hand. The use of shuddering visuals and harsh sound design also gives us an idea of how it feels when one of Frank’s psychotic episodes is approaching.
Wood is transcendent in the role that the late Joe Spinell once made famous. His version of Frank is not the greasy beast of a man he was in the original; he comes off as someone with a sensitive, yet very tortured soul. Combine this with the actor’s own celestial quality, and you begin to even feel sympathy for this completely despicable monster. Believe us when we say that this is no easy task.
Along with the film’s assured direction and wonderful acting, Maxime Alexandre’s prowling, POV photography does an impressive job of capturing the wretched grit and grime of Frank’s world, while also balancing it with a French art cinema vibe that lifts the film out of the pure exploitation arena and into something of more importance. This is grindhouse meets arthouse. French electronica artist (and enemy of search engines) Rob provides a creepy, pulsing electronic synth score that nails the scuzzy vibe of ‘80s slasher films and proves itself an instant classic in its own right as soon as the film’s opening credits theme kicks in. Along with Pascal Laugier’s film Martyrs, Maniac is another example of how the French are currently ruling the horror scene.
This is an extremely confronting film – one of the most confronting this reviewer has ever seen, but that’s what makes it such a fantastic piece of horror. It isn’t content with conforming to the expectations of modern horror cinema; this is a film that pushes against the boundary of what is considered acceptable violence on screen. If the film manages to slide by censors without a metaphorical scalping of its own, it’s bound to be extremely controversial, especially in light of the real-life acts of heinous violence against women that have been in the news as of late. However, as people who are able to separate fact from fiction, we wouldn’t have it any other way. Maniac is that rare horror remake that completely outclasses its source in every sense. And when you consider how much we love the original, that’s really saying something.
