Maniac (2012, Franck Khalfoun)

Bill Lustig's original serial killer examination piece, "Maniac" (1980), is one of my favorite slasher films of all time. Violent, misogynistic, gory and just flat-out sleazy as all hell. It was ruthlessly attacked by ignorant, pansie-ass critics and feminist groups whose panties were incessantly knotted over the film's depictions of whore-stalking/mutilating, as well as the theatrical poster and accompanying tagline. It's just a kick-ass flick that's got a great history of controversy attached to it - not to mention dishing out some great gore effects, a great performance by Joe Spinell, filthy look and feel and just a wonderfully straight-forward approach to delineating on a serial killer's day-to-day, night-to-night compulsory murder habits...

And, of course, it's been remade. Right off the bat, the whole Elijah Wood thing had me a bit dubious, as well as it having Alexandre Aja's name on it as a writer/producer... But, as one would expect, I had to see it just to know how pissed off I can truly get from a film. What were my thoughts? Meh...

Wood plays Frank Zito - the owner of a mannequin restoration shop who moonlights as a spastic spree killer. Like the original, he's got mommy issues up to his eyeballs and has a 'thing' for hacking off women's scalps and tacking them to his precious mannequins. They carried over the whole concept of him meeting and becoming obsessed with an artsy, foreign photographer.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much of anything from this 'retelling' and I really didn't get much of anything out of it. However, it IS somewhat interesting how they went about filming the majority of it from the killer's point-of-view. At certain moments - usually during a murder - he 'leaves his body', so to speak, and we see him and the victim together in the frame as he brutalizes her. This is an alright idea, but I thought it kinda left the movie limited on what it could pull off in terms of suspense. Still, it works fine at a few different points, but overall I felt it wear thin and kinda get in the way as the film went on.

As far as performances - particularly, Elijah Wood - he's decent in this if you just think of it as a completely stand-alone film without any ties to the 1980 flick. He is nowhere near as threatening and powerful looking as Spinell, but, of course, you don't see a whole lot of him aside from mirror reflections and the intermittent non-POV scenes, which is probably for the best considering Wood's physical presence really isn't teeming with menace. That said, he's certainly not awful as a more 'twinkish' type of schizophrenic.

The kill scenes also aren't on par with the original - lacking the cruelty and overall goriness of the original film, aside from a specific scene in which Frank tears the scalp from the skull of a hogtied older woman. That moment was nice and mean and fairly realistic looking.

To sum it up, "Maniac '12" is a pretty ineffective remake, considering it made huge attempts to showcase some potentially innovative tactics. If I were to judge it on it's own merits - omitting the "remake" stigma - I would say that "Maniac" is just alright. Not the worst thing I've ever seen, but far from the perverse, gritty, sleazy, mean-spirited Lustig flick.