Maniac on the dancefloor

Horror remakes normally lack in the fresh meat stakes. They seem to either be blow by blow retellings with better FX or uninspired gore fests with under developed characters and unoriginal ideas.  Maniac is an interesting case as although it may be laden with fake blood and horror clichés it also has inspired performances and interesting directorial decisions.

 

 

In the 1980’s Maniac became a cult classic, telling the story of a man who falls in love, only he also happens to be obsessed with murdering women and using them to complete his mannequin collection through the delightful process of scalping.  Although 2013’s Maniac has slight changes to the script, the foundations of the film remain the same, there are still lots of mannequins and yes you guessed it, lots of scalping. Elijah Wood cast in the role of Frank, the films maniac, is an inspired choice. Yeah we have seen him play against character before, see Sin City, but he had no easy feat getting this complex psycho across. His demeanour and look add depth to the idea of this on-going internal struggle, flashing from angel to devil in two seconds flat. The film is shot in the POV of Frank, so considering that Mr. Wood’s face is on screen for all of about ten minutes, he still manages through brilliant off camera dialogue to convey a truly horrifying young man. Although the camera shots may annoy along the way, it helps to cement this feeling of claustrophobia and uncomfortable closeness in the viewer to a majorly deranged person. A breath of fresh air and a great directorial choice from Franck Khalfoun, whose previous outings are all trashy straight to DVD slashers. If you have seen P2 or Switchblade Romance please get in touch, you may need professional help.

The story itself is a little under developed and a tad on the deja vu side of things. There’s Bates inspired mother issues and of course the obligatory migraines. It would have been helped by a little less of the gore and a little more of a story. Saying that, the gore is great. It might not have meant to be on the funny side of things but a little chuckle did escape this film fryer-upper during some of the more ludicrous moments of the bloodbath.

You could do worse than watch Maniac; it’s a neat little package that doesn’t over stay its welcome, wrapped up in 89 minutes. If you like actors playing against typecasting and a soundtrack drenched in perfectly subtle 80’s synths then this just might be a surprise success for you. If you don’t, then just don’t bother. That other film about mannequins with Andrew McCarthy is pretty good too. Give that one a watch. Just don’t mix them up.

 

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