MANIAC

"You will NOT go out tonight. Is that clear? You will stay home ... with me!"

The streets of Los Angeles, present day. It is the evening. We observe the busy comings-and-goings of hookers and their Johns, through the eyes of loner Frank (Elijah Wood). He sits in his car, anonymously surveying this world of sleaze while deliberating over which unsuspecting woman will become his next victim.

He chooses one, follows her to her apartment and rams a blade through her jaw to prevent her from screaming. What he wants from her is her scalp - and he wastes no time in bloodily procuring it.

Frank is a complex character. It transpires that he's inherited his mother's mannequin shop since she passed away "last summer". His lonely hours are devoted to restoring antique dolls, the prized scalps from his frequent kills finishing them off with naturalistic hair that - with the assistance of a good fly spray - affords Frank's artificial companions an added hint of realism.

His awkwardness with the opposite sex first comes to light when he meets a girl through a dating website and suffers a migraine as soon as she shows affection toward him. Despite that, she takes him back to her place ... but things end badly, for her.

She's just one of many. Frank gets upset by sexually precocious young ladies - something that stems from growing up with a coke-snorting mother who would openly whore her body to men, sometimes more than one at a time, in front of her bewildered son. Her death has clearly fucked him up royally, as he adopts a split personality when stressed out by sexual encounters: his internal voice becomes that of his mother, which he bickers against openly as he slays his unsuspecting quarries.

Then Anna (Nora Arnezeder) walks into his life. A pretty young French photographer with a convenient penchant for mannequins, she is drawn to Frank's shop one sunny afternoon. He befriends her and is quietly beguiled by both her common interest in his artwork, and the fact that she gives him more than the time of day.

For all his reticent social demeanour, Frank is adamant that in Anna he has found a friend. They gel even further when they go to the cinema together, and enjoy a screening of THE CABINET OF DR CALIGARI. But then, her personal status and professional acquaintances cause problems of their own ...

MANIAC is not easy to synopsise, as it flows rather unconventionally almost as a stream of consciousness. Other than occasional flashbacks and hallucinations which serve to illustrate the roots of Frank's mental fragility, the bulk of the film plays out in episodic, point-of-view set-pieces which find Frank observing and then slaying choice females. A police investigation into the killings is so peripheral to the plot that it barely merits mention. It's only during the final third of the film that Frank’s relationship with Anna comes to the fore and presents some semblance of dramatic arc.

That's not so much a criticism as an observation. Franck Khalfoun's film is after all a remake of William Lustig's celebrated 1980 troubler of the same name. Lustig's MANIAC was episodic and very loose in a narrative sense too. Khalfoun merely stays true to that philosophy, which is quite an impressive tactic for a $6 million production with an A-list actor in its lead role.

There are a few more surprises. First is the consistently grim tone, which largely eschews any comic relief preferring instead to force the viewer into the mindset of Wood's killer. The bulk of the film is shot from his perspective, his visage only being viewed in reflections, mirrors etc - other than in a couple of key scenes. Then we have the violence, which is set at a level which is uncommon for a film with such mainstream potential. It is a gory film, and all of the FX appear to be of the old-school practical variety. There’s also Wood himself, who - despite being the polar opposite of Joe Spinell's original maniac - is cannily cast as the mummy's boy who frets, agonises and then lashes out when confronted with sexual encounters that he isn't emotionally mature enough to cope with. His wide-eyed boyish features may seem at loggerheads with Spinell’s original sweaty performance, but Khalfoun’s draws equal amounts of intensity and vulnerability from his actor and the results are unexpectedly authentic.

Does the film break new ground? No. The POV approach has been adopted countless times before, so the notion of a filmmaker inviting their audience to voyeuristic thrills is no longer shocking. But, in Khalfoun’s defence he pulls it off with finesse and in such a way that it’s not half as gimmicky as it sounds. Being behind Frank’s eyes for the large part of the film works thematically, and his orgiastic grunts as his victims expire before him/us resonate much deeper as a consequence.

Lustig co-produces and I suspect he’s been pretty vocal about how the film should look and feel. To this end, despite a fairly polished overall look, Khalfoun’s remake is pretty faithful: the design of Frank’s squalid apartment and the mannequins that hide in its darkest corners is eerily familiar; a couple of set-piece scenes are loosely recreated – the subway terrorisation, the protracted strangling (although Khalfoun doesn’t swap actresses to suggest Frank thinks he’s strangling his mother here, instead he pulls a similar stunt later when Frank watches a couple fucking in the street).

The front cover boasts a line from a review likening the film to Nicholas Winding Refn’s DRIVE. Aside from the opening titles sequence, which involves a car, a neon-lit backdrop and some retro electronic music, this is possibly the most misleading comparison I’ve ever read. As obvious as it sounds, the best film to liken this to is the original MANIAC. And that’s no bad thing. After all, am I the only one whose heart sank when I first heard that a Frenchman was remaking Lustig’s film … with fucking Frodo Baggins in the lead role?

A pleasant surprise all round, then.

The screener DVD provided for review purposes did not make that task easy. Alas, it was a very crude tester disc with no menus or extras, and a hideously cropped transfer (blowing the original 2.35:1 ratio up to 1.78:1). I also had a "Property of .." watermark and timecoded clock to contend with.

That said, I was still able to appreciate the fine stylised colour schemes and handsome cinematography of Maxime Alexandre. And those realistic scalpings, of which there are a few, shone through with razor-sharp clarity regardless.

English audio on the tester disc was provided in a clear and clean 2.0 mix.

Metrodome’s retail disc will undoubtedly present the film in its original aspect ratio and look as stunning as I’m sure it sounds. Unfortunately the review disc doesn’t give any clues as to how impressive the end results will be, or what extras we’re to expect.

Still, the film comes recommended. It’s not as nasty as Lustig’s original and sadly doesn’t stretch to a recreation of that film’s infamous shotgun scene. On the flip side, Wood is a surprisingly good headcase and Khalfoun’s decision to shoot from his perspective is interesting. Oh, and he handles the romantic interest far better than Lustig ever did.

Also available on blu-ray.

Review by Stuart Willis