Review of Maniac (2012) by Jesse O — 17 Oct 2013

This is better than your typical slasher film because, while it's certainly more than gory, it at least tries to have a reasoning for its madness. That's not to say they justify Frank's actions, it's the opposite, in fact.

But they do try to explore what would drive a person to commit these horrible acts to these women, and how Frank was raised by an irresponsible mother has driven him to this point. So yes, I understand that for some people the movie may have been much too gory and bleak, but I do believe there is a point to the film.

And that is to see into the psyche of this man. But I also think that the movie thinks itself to be smarter and cleverer than it really is. Yea, it is definitely a smart horror movie, smarter than the average horror film to be honest, but I do think that the more psychological aspects of the film feel forced.

Almost as if the movie went out of its way to prove that it was better than your average horror film rather than concentrating on making the movie better. For example the P.O.V stuff, the entire movie is shot from Frank's point of view, was good and it wasn't distracting as I thought, was probably done in a meta way to have the audience be the "killer" as well as Frank.

This is certainly a good idea and making the violence as 'real' as possible is in itself critical of the bloodthirsty nature of the viewing audience. I thought it was smartly done, but it's an example of the movie sort of going out of its way to prove its intelligence.

It was a little pretentious to me. But the P.O.V aspect of the film certainly gives you a different way to view this character, you only have Elijah's voice to go on and I think he does a great job in spite of the fact that you only see him in reflections in the mirror.

You truly get into the mind of this character, and it'll certainly be uncomfortable for some, as it should be. And I thought the 80s synth score was really cool. While some aspects of the film are pretty pretentious and self-indulgent, this is still pretty good and I'm always a happy man when I see a horror movie that doesn't drive me insane with its stupidity.