Horror Pick: Maniac (2012)
I’ve you’ve been following my previous articles here on We Got This Covered, you’ll already know about my undying love of Franck Khalfoun’s Maniac remake starring Elijah Wood. This diamond-in-the-rough is nothing short of a future classic, taking William Lustig’s grungy exploitation film and spinning a wholly new, freshly calculated dark vision that blows away the old-school cult classic. Many people are to thank for such a success, from Khalfoun’s direction to Wood’s jaw-dropping performance, but it’s the first-person POV filmmaking that drives home a feeling of pure, unshakable evil. Yes, “found footage” can still work if done right – believe it.
Addressing Elijah’s character Frank, there’s a fine line between being a murderous psychopath and an unfortunate victim of circumstance. Abused and scarred by a neglectful, hussy mother, Frank now takes his rage out on women in the form of sexual abuse and gruesome scalpings, creating mannequin statues that will never leave him. There are moments Khalfoun wants you to sympathize with Frank, evoking the tortured child inside, but Wood also strikes a seedy note that never lets you forget what a monster he’s become. Frank becomes a layered, complex character we both fear and pity, much to the credit of a hobbit who has been making quite a name for himself around the genre circuit – but Maniac stands as Wood’s best horror performance to date.
The decision to put Wood behind the camera for most of Maniac is a risky but rewarding one, because we in-turn become the killer ourselves – sans getting our hands dirty. Maniac is the kind of horror movie that makes you feel absolutely despicable for watching, putting you in the shoes of a mentally unstable stalker, as even his heightened, anxious breathing can be heard. We’re inside the head of Frank, getting a personal account of each unfortunate murder – some being so realistically brutal, a sense of terror turns into legitimate unrest over what we’re actually watching.
This is all said much better in my theatrical review, because my emotions were still running high, so feel free to give the whole article a read to really understand why Maniac becomes a horror watch unlike anything you’ve probably ever seen. It’s disgusting, perverse, unfathomable, and comes from the bowels of hell, but as far as horror movies go, it doesn’t get much better than this.
