Maniac Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Maniac Blu-ray Movie Review

That rare horror remake that justifies its own existence.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater October 13, 2013

William Lustig's 1980 cult exploitation movie, Maniac, is known for its low-budget, guerrilla filmmaking aesthetic and gory displays of violence— see special FX guru Tom Savini's head getting pulped by a shotgun blast—but aside from the blood and guts, it's an exhaustingly grim, poorly paced slasher exercise. The idea of a remake, then, is not nearly as offensive as, say, the wholly unnecessary reboots of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, and Halloween. With Maniac—a movie with a few good ideas but poor execution—there's definitely room for improvement.

A close thematic cousin to Driller Killer and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, the original film forces us to empathize with its deranged serial murderer, to see the events from his homicidal, broken-minded perspective. The remake, written by High Tension's Alexandre Aja and directed by P2's Franck Khalfoun, takes this to the logical extreme. Not only do we follow the killer—played by Elijah Wood—we also see through his eyes. Literally. That is, nearly the entire film is shot in first-person, giving this new Maniac a voyeuristic, audience-unsettling gaze.

Maniac

The setting has been switched from grimy, pre-Disneyfied New York to present-day Los Angeles, and there are enough additional small changes in the plot to qualify this as a "loose" remake. For instance, unlike the overweight, slobbish apartment landlord that Joe Spinell played in the original, Elijah Wood's Frank Zito is more of a Norman Bates type, diminutive and neat. After his mother died—and more on her in a bit—Frank inherited her antique mannequin restoration shop and lives in the back room, surrounded by plaster body parts and blank white faces.

The film wastes no time revealing that Frank is one disturbed individual. Without spoiling anything major, the opening sequence has him slowly driving through a bad stretch of downtown, following a street walker back to her apartment after a night of clubbing. After discovering where she lives, he returns the next evening, cuts off the power to her floor, and creeps up on her as she walks in darkness down the hallway. In most horror movies, when we—as an audience—scream, "He's right behind you!," we're seeing the killer lurking in the shadows behind some unsuspecting victim. Here, looking through Frank's eyes, we are the killer in the shadows, which is every bit as terrifying, if not more. We're complicit in the woman's death, and boy does she ever die; this first kill is absolutely brutal, setting us up for the future shocks the film has in store.

A mouth is hacked with a cleaver. Backs are stabbed. A girl in high heels gets her Achilles' tendon slit. It's wince-worthy, squeeze-the-armrest-until-it's- over stuff, the sudden violence erupting after long sequences of when's it gonna happen suspense. (The remake vastly improves on Lustig's dreary pacing.) Even the downtime is uneasy. Frank's particular fetish is scalping his victims and mounting their hair on the mannequins in his bedroom, but he doesn't clean off the blood and sinewy bits first, attracting hordes of flies that he tries in vain to keep away with a can of bug spray. He gets fierce migraines. He scrubs his hands raw with a steel kitchen scourer. He has somewhat cliche flashback to his childhood, seeing his mother prostitute herself, presumably to keep her store afloat. Antique mannequin repair can't exactly be a lucrative career path, after all.

The virgin/whore dichotomy is in full effect here, and the film sometimes walks in that gray space—like Kanye West's Yeezus or Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines"—between outright misogyny and commentary on misogyny. There's no ignoring the fact that we're watching women being horrifyingly abused on screen for our moviegoing enjoyment. This doesn't exactly make for a pleasant experience—and it's certainly not date night material—but Maniac does deliver the goods that genre fans expect: explicit gore and white-knuckle terror.

There's even something of a story amid the carnage. Frank's murderous urges are conflicted when he meets Anna (Nora Arnezeder), a photographer who falls in love with his mannequins and asks to use them in her upcoming gallery show. Frank, in turn, falls for Anna, but finds himself deep in the friendzone, serving as more of a confidant and muse than a potential romantic partner. (It's hinted that Anna, who hangs out with a lot of gay guys, assumes Frank isn't straight.) It should go without saying that the film's grasp on real-life serial killer psychology is superficial, but within the context of a slasher movie, Elijah Wood's maniac is well developed enough that his actions make a sick kind of sense. Since we only see him in occasional reflections and rare, pull-away third-person shots—usually to give a more gruesome view of a murder—Wood has the difficult task of selling his character's insanity almost solely through his voice, and he manages to make Frank both menacing and, in a weird way, pitiable.

On a technical level, the Maniac is very slickly made—far from the grungy, lo-fi 16mm look of Lustig's version—but this effectively modernizes the film and keeps it from becoming yet another faux-grindhouse movie. You could say director Franck Khalfoun actually de-Americanizes the film somewhat, making it less of a grubby no-wave slasher and more giallo-inspired, as stylish as it is lurid. Mario Bava would've probably gotten off on Maniac, which, with its mannequin obsession, bears more than a passing resemblance to his Hatchet for the Honeymoon. There's some Brian De Palma and Jonathan Demme in here too—including one not-so-subtle nod to The Silence of the Lambs—but who can blame Khalfoun for stealing from the masters?

Maniac Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Apparently, Elijah Wood's field of view is in 2.35:1. Maniac's Cinemascope-ratio 1080p picture might not have been the best choice for a movie shot from a first-person perspective, but you get used to it. Likewise, though the film's Blu-ray isn't perfect, it is perfectly watchable, with no major distractions or picture quality hiccups. Shot digitally with Red Epic cameras in mostly low-light situations, there is quite a lot of source noise in many scenes—and there are also occasional signs of compression if you bother to stand right up next to the screen and pixel peep—but from a normal viewing distance, the image is pleasing to watch. While not entirely consistent, clarity is usually good, with visible fine detail in skin, clothing, and hair textures. (And you'll be seeing a lot of hair, typically detached from heads.) The film's color grading has an intentional sickly greenish-yellow cast to the highlights much of the time, and the generally drab palette is punctuated by bright blood reds. Black levels can be a bit milky during darker scenes—an attempt to preserve shadow detail, probably—but otherwise, contrast is strong. Not a stunning presentation, exactly, but no real issues either.

Maniac Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Perhaps more convincing than the first-person visual point of view is the audio perspective, which is made up of detailed and immersive sound design. Brought to life with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, the mix effectively puts us inside Frank Zito's head. Not only do we hear the usual ambience from the rear channels—Los Angeles traffic, subway noise, restaurant chatter—we also get the heightened, sharpened way Frank experiences the sound of the world around him when he has his piercing headaches. (Most disturbing, probably, is the constant swarm of flies inside Frank's bedroom.) Backing up the excellent sound design is a killer synthesizer-heavy score from a French composer who goes only by "Rob." (Real name: Robin Coudert.) The music smacks of the Drive soundtrack at times—borrowing from both Italo disco sounds and the electronic horror scores of the '70s from groups like Goblin—and it pulses and arpeggiates with presence and clarity. Dialogue is always easy to understand too. The disc also includes an uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 mix-down, as well as optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.

Maniac Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary: Elijah Wood, director Franck Khalfoun, and executive producer Alix Taylor take us through the details and difficulties of the film's creation.
• Making Of (HD, 1:06:21): A lengthy, well-edited production documentary featuring a good mix of behind-the-scenes material and cast/crew interviews, with an emphasis on how the first-person perspective was accomplished.
• Poster Gallery (HD): A small user-directed gallery with three poster designs.
• Deleted Scenes (HD, 4:09): A few quick cut scenes, including Maniac hacking a body to bits and braiding some hair.
• Trailer (HD: 2:09)

Maniac Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

One of those rare horror remakes that improves on the original in nearly all regards—aside from nostalgia and cult familiarity, of course—Maniac is violent and deranged, stylish and well-paced. This new version feels strikingly giallo-ish, partially because it features a killer synthesizer soundtrack, but largely because director Franck Khalfoun knows the ins and outs of the sub-genre—the gleaming, phallic knives, the lurid colors, the nightmare dreaminess and psycho-sexual tension. If you're looking for a pre-Halloween film to make you wince and grind your teeth, this might be it. IFC's Blu-ray is well-stocked too, with a director/star commentary and a lengthy making-of documentary. Recommended.