Maniac
Hair-raising
Look
to your right. Against that lurid
purple background reminiscent of one of Jack Nicholson’s suits in Tim Burton’s
Batman is a
rating out of 5. Apparently there
are some people out there who base their decision whether or not to see a film
purely on that rating. Those
people should definitely see Maniac.
They should have a big dinner first. Then at the concession stand they should invest in a bucket
of their favourite tooth-rotting syrupy soft drink. And some nachos caked in industrial cheese. Mmm…yummy! Enjoy!
Now
they’re out of the way and probably puking in that bucket, you should know that
whatever numerical value that sits to your right doesn’t accurately reflect the
film you’ll see. Some of you will
love this film. Some of you will
despise it. It’s unavoidable. Quite simply, Maniac is a truly repellant, bleak,
nihilistic, nasty film that’s also one of the most visually stunning, original,
disturbing, experimental pieces of cinema you’ll see all year.
A
remake of William Lustig’s 1980 down-and-dirty slasher flick, the titular Maniac is Frank (a scary, fantastic Elijah
Wood) a shy,
sensitive young fellow who collects and restores mannequins by day. But by night Frank, plagued by
migraines and mommy issues, hunts and brutally murders women, collecting his
victims’ scalps, taking his trophies home and stapling the scalps to his
models’ heads, induling in fantasy relationships with his ‘girlfriends.’
When
he meets Anna (French actress Nora Arnezeder), a photographer who wants to use his
mannequins as the subject of her next exhibition, the two form a
connection. Anna brings the lonely
Frank out of his shell, allows him to function (almost!) as a normal person, their
tentative relationship offering a glimmer of redemption. But there’s always someone coming
between them, Frank wants her all to himself and his headaches are only getting
worse…
Shifting
location from the original’s sleazy, pre-Giuliani cesspool New York to a
sweaty, neon-lit Los Angeles, Maniac also puts you right behind the killer’s
eyes, director Franck Khalfoun and cinematographer Maxime Alexandre shooting virtually the whole
film in highly stylised subjective POV with star Wood’s cherubic features and
soulful, saucer eyes glimpsed only fleetingly in photographs and reflections
(one shot brilliantly recreating the Lustig’s original’s lurid poster image in
a car door reflection).
It’s
a bold, experimental move, inviting the audience directly into Frank’s
fractured world allowing us to empathise with him while also condemning us for
our scopophilic desires, our vicarious pleasure in Frank’s actions. The effect is stunning, disorienting,
often nauseating and potentially alienating, giving the audience no safe
retreat, no respite. It’s our hands repeatedly plunging the
knife into that girl, our hands strangling the life from another, our hands lovingly slicing,
ripping the dripping scalps from their skulls. Alexandre’s camera never flinches, never looks away,
recording every brutal, horrific detail even down to Frank’s constant use of
bug spray as he constantly battles the flies feasting on his trophy
scalps. Khalfoun doesn’t just put
us behind Frank’s eyes, he plugs us directly into his brain allowing us to
experience the paranoid freak-outs, traumatic memories and visual and auditory
hallucinations that plague him.
There’s no escape.
Lustig’s
original Maniac was a nasty, misogynistic little film that shocked audiences back
in the ‘80s, earning itself a cult following among horror fans and gore hounds,
but otherwise is largely forgotten today and it’s tempting to write Khalfoun’s
film off as a cynical exercise in nostalgic woman-bashing. While it’s not without it its faults,
not least of which is a childishly simplistic motivation for our killer (Mommy
was a whore and he didn’t get enough cuddles!) and a middle third that sags
into tedium (how do you make killing beautiful women boring?), Khalfoun’s Maniac is a gruesome,
nerve-shredding art-house shocker that’s quite literally in your face,
implicating its audience in the onscreen horror. A beautiful, disturbing, sickening piece of filmmaking.
David Watson
Directed by:
Written by:
Produced by:
Starring:
Genres:
Crime, Horror,
Thriller
Language:
English
Runtime:
1 hour 29
minutes
Certificate:
18
Rating:
UK
Cinema Release Date:
Friday
15th March
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