Maniac review - Like Brainiac, only with more Scalping

Maniac is a stylish and intelligent re-appropriation to William Lustig’s nasty 1980 slasher film of the same name but that’s not to say it’s a film that works on all fronts. Being shot nearly entirely from the first person view point of Frank, (well played by Elijah Wood for someone hardly visible in the film) Maniac plants us inside the deranged mind of a scalp-hungry killer. We are given front row seats to Frank’s theatre of sadistic expression as he roams the Taxi Driver-inflected streets of a shimmering New York City. Maniac draws as much from the gleaming as from scuzzy recalling Nic Winding Refn’s Drive. The comparisons to Refn’s film are only skin deep however. Drive knew perfectly how to reference and how to innovate, Maniac’s slides into intertextual homage feel wildly out of place with how nasty and witless it is.

A scalpin' good time

Frank's obsession with the still, corpse like mannequins explicitly dictates an underlying necrophilic fascination. This theme of the film isn't dealt with reflectively but exploitatively and becomes a weight pressing down on the audience, a heavy burden of morbid, sexualised and unprecedentedly explicit content. Later in the film we are given reason to question what of Franks imposed reality is actuality and what is his wavering vision of the world. This is when the film is at its strongest, playing on the given perspective to subvert the preconceived expectations of the audience. This is when Maniac is at it’s most filmic and enjoyable, playing with our expectations in a way only cinema can accomplish.

 Maniac doesn't quite hit its mark but it certainly hits hard containing scenes even the most hardened horror fan will squirm at. To watch Maniac is quite an undertaking as the given viewpoint of the violence can only appear voyeuristic and leering. Cinema is, in itself, a voyeuristic, leering experience but through narrative and filmmaking tricks we are manipulated to forget that and be immersed in what we’re watching. While watching Maniac, you are constantly aware that you are seeing through the eyes of someone who finds a fetishistic allure to horrifically deforming women and that is, depending on ones own sensibilities, a draining experience. Maniac is a well crafted, challenging film and one not hard to admire but one hard to like and a film that ultimately leaves you feeling defeated.