Review of Maniac (2012) by Paul R — 31 Mar 2013

Coming in blind to Maniac without seeing the cult 80's original puts me in difficult position, I was unable to answer the usual easy question: Where on the pointless scale does this remake sit? Is it "utterly pointless" through to "horrendously offensive to the originals memory pointless"? Now, I've seen a few remakes prior to the original films before and many - if not most - were hard to swallow, but that is definitely not the case here.

What Franck Khalfoun has done here has worked extremely well, particularly on the POV style of filming, every motion and movement is in your shoes magnifying the effect of Elijah Woods next move, from the incessant hand scrubbing through to the most horrifying physical torture he subjects to his victims, you are in his shoes. The POV style adds a rawness that although difficult to swallow in parts, it certainly works to great effect. The only shame is that due to this style we see less of Elijah Wood's performance, but of what we do see we cannot fault. I always knew he would be good at this type of role after seeing him as the scary, stalking and silent Kevin in Sin City. He was destined to shake off Frodo Baggins very quickly indeed.

Its not one for the queasy. From the very off we see exactly what we are in for and thrown into the deep end, each and every nasty turn this film takes are increasingly more shocking than the next. Intense, realistic and excruciatingly graphic, this violent Horror stand out from the crowd, head, shoulders and scalp above the rest.

Overall, this film works very well indeed. It is hugely tense, saturated with cringe provoking physical nasties with a great soundtrack, a neat trick using POV and a very credible performance from Elijah Wood - This 2013 horror is very worthy of your time.