When he's not playing a hobbit, Elijah Wood can apparently be one creepy mofo. Of course, anyone who saw Sin City already knew that, but whether you saw him in that or not, watching him as Frank Zito in Maniac will leave you with no doubt in your mind.
Frank Zito is a quiet, timid man who restores old mannequins for a living. In his spare time, he also likes to stalk and kill women, then scalp them and bring their hair back to his apartment for the mannequins to wear. In Frank's mind, the mannequins then become the women he's murdered, staying with him forever as his girlfriends and "family". Frank's psychosis apparently stems from a childhood watching his mother prostitute herself (this film is also a Freudian psychoanalyst's wet dream), and while he's aware of it and appears to hate this side of himself sometimes, he also seems unable to control it. When he meets Anna, however, a photographer who is fascinated with his work and wants to use it in an upcoming gallery, he sees a chance for him to have a "normal" connection with a woman and thus tries to suppress his homicidal urges. Alas, I'm sure we can all see how well that will turn out...
Maniac is actually a remake; the original film was made in 1980, directed by William Lustig and starred Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro. The special effects were made by none other than the great Tom Savini, but it was the original film's unrelenting grittiness and sleaziness that made it truly infamous in the horror movie world. This remake takes it in somewhat of a different direction; the grit and the sleaze are still there in scenes where Frank cruises the streets, looking for his next victim - but it's also got a touch more style and class than the original. Wood's Frank is more charming and rather better-looking than Spinell's was, for one thing, and he is able to use the advances of the 21st century to his advantage - he picks one victim via an online dating site, for example.
Probably the biggest difference between the original and this version, however - as well as one of the most striking aspects of the film as a whole - is the use of the first person viewpoint throughout the film. We see nearly the entire film, with the exception of one or two brief moments which are meant to be Frank's idealised "fantasies" of how he wishes things to be, through Frank's eyes - we only see Frank ourselves when he is looking back at us from a mirror. This first-person perspective isn't going to be to everyone's liking, especially when it makes us experience each murder as though we are committing it, but at the same time it offers more insights into Frank's messed-up head, and maybe even elicits a little sympathy for him at points. Only a little though. The man is still killing and scalping women, after all.
Maniac is also a very gory movie, as you would expect from a film where women are getting scalped regularly. The gore is for the most part realistic as well, which adds to the disturbing nature of it all (I think there was only one moment of gore where I couldn't help but laugh rather than feel slightly unnerved). But there's not blood splashed all over the screen from beginning to end - far more of the film is devoted to Frank's increasingly tenuous grip on sanity and the lengths he goes to try to hold on to something - anything - to keep him "normal". In the end, it's well worth a watch.
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