31 DAYS OF HORROR - Day 15: MANIAC (2012)

The lonely, warped world of antique manikin restorer Frank Zito (Elijah Wood).

Frank Zito (Elijah Wood) runs a shop where he professionally restores antique manikins with a skilled hand. Unfortunately, Frank is a schizophrenic whose spells are kept temporarily at bay by oral medication, but when he's off his meds he stalks the nighttime streets of trendy Los Angeles for female prey. Traumatized by his wild prostitute mother, who made him watch her servicing johns when he was a child, Frank developed a twisted infantile sexuality from observing his mom at work servicing men with wanton abandon from where he was stashed in a closet, and even on the street. Frank desires female companionship and nurture, and he searches for a woman who will provide both and not abandon him, and he even resorts to a dating website in search of his hoped-for connection. But Frank's self-perception is literally as genital-free as his manikins, as evidenced by a glimpse into his mind, and since he cannot perform sexually in an adult manner, fear and anger take over, and his razor-sharp hunting knife serves as his none-too-subtle surrogate penis. 

Frank's murderous spree bloodily rages for weeks, with the slayings all pointing to the same killer due to his habit of removing his victims' scalps to take home as adornments for the smooth pates of the manikins he keeps as companions and "girlfriends."

 The victim whose savage slaying most shattered my heart: sweet, bubbly, and sexually-forward  bartender Lucie (Megan M. Duffy), lured to Frank via a dating site. None of Frank's targets deserved their fate, but her least of all. A great and truly tragic performance.

Frank notices Anna (Nora Arnezeder), a French art and fashion photographer snapping pictures of the manikins on display in his storefront window, and the pair strike up a friendship, connecting as one artist to another. Frank falls for Anna and stays on target with his medication in hope that their friendship will become something more. But the beast inside Frank cannot be so easily brought to heal, and it's only a matter of time until the narrative culminates in tragedy for all involved.

Basically a beat-for-beat remake of the infamous 1980 slasher landmark, albeit with a few nods toward 21st Century modernity and a location shift from New York to Los Angeles, the 2012 take on MANIAC is superior to the original in every conceivable way. Instead of being a simple gut bucket splatter orgy, the remake replaces the original's squalid look and tone with sharp cinematography and clever camera compositions that instantly communicate that this is a French-made arthouse thriller with Euro-cinema sensibilities. It's graphic, in fact very graphic, yes, but it somehow lacks the finger-down-the throat queaziness of the 1980 take. This time around, Frank is genuinely sympathetic despite his horrific crimes, and effect no doubt bolstered by the casting of cherub-faced Elijah would in the role. He always looks sad, terrified, and helpless, and unlike Joe Spinell's sweaty, overweight slob iteration, the audience wants to see Frank somehow stop his spree and get the help that he so sorely needs, whereas Spinell's version was the puppet of a script with nothing on its mind other than moving from one lurid set piece of butchery to the next with no real plot to speak of. Elijah Wood, on the other hand, was given an intelligent script that's a character study with accents of some of the most impressively realistic gore I have yet seen. It's a completely different approach than  practical effects legend Tom Savini's realism-eschewing effects that favor an E.C. Comics/ carnival spookshow sensibility over sanguinary verisimilitude.

An horrific tour de force of Théâtre du Grand-Guignol-style gruesomeness.

 

The performances are all top notch and marked by their honest vulnerability and bravery in enacting what's being depicted. Frank's victims resonate more soundly than the mere slaughter-fodder of 1980, and the love story builds organically, instead of suddenly being shoehorned in from out of nowhere with just thirty minutes left to go. We care about what happens between Frank and Anna, unlike what we got between Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro. When comparing that element in the two films, I am convinced that Caroline Munro was cast solely so Joe Spinell could have her up nubile lusciousness against him as love interest. Her inclusion amounts to little more than rote and gratuitous padding that derails what little narrative thrust there is in the original.

 

Anna (Nora Arnezeder) photographs Frank's work process with genuine admiration, thus laying the seeds of doomed romance.

 

The super-depressing atmosphere and overall feel of the 1980 version is gone, which is fine by me, because that film's unpleasantness overwhelmed me with its crushing darkness, seeming revelry in its misogyny. I can take a lot of nastiness, but there's just something so grubby and "off" about that film that makes me feel bad, and even though I watch a lot of cinema that contains violence and assorted degradation of the human experience, I easily parse those works as just entertainment, luridness and sleaze factor notwithstanding, whereas the 1980 MANIAC struck me as possibly a look into the unfettered and better left unexpressed inner musings of its creator, a place I was not comfortable visiting. 

 

Directed by Franck Khalfoun from a screenplay by Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur, the remake clearly was helmed by creative minds that respected its audience and sought to craft a solid psychological shocker whose mayhem was framed with more in its dark little head than simply pointing the camera at whatever was set up to explode or bleed during a given shot. There is artistry on display here that renders the visceral content palatable despite its hideous excess, and nearly the entire film is seen from the direct visual perspective of Frank. You'll note that he is only seen from another's direct viewpoint only a few times over the course of the narrative, as at all other moments the camera shows us Frank's world through his POV. If we see Frank's face directly, it's only via flashbacks, his mind's unstable imaginings, or as reflected in mirrors or other surfaces. 

 

Reflection of madness.

 

But unlike the countless slasher films that allowed us to witness the horror though the killer's eyes, sensitivity is granted to what we experience from Frank's gaze, and at no point is there a sense of getting off via vicarious identification with a murder machine. Frank is all-too-human and vulnerable with his child's sexuality, and placing us in his shoes only serves to drive home his tragic helplessness, misery, loneliness, and implacable inevitable doom. We are there with Frank as his life spirals down its hellish path, and it's a very effective grabbing of the audience by the collective collar and shaking us out of the usual passive complacency of the usual in-the-dark popcorn-munching enjoyment of simulated slaughter.

So, I found MANIAC 2012 to be an unexpected gem, a modern classic that blows its template out of the water in smoldering chunks, and for the life of me I cannot fathom why it is not more of a steadily discussed and analyze cause celebre among film buffs in general and horror aficionados in particular. This one gets my nod as this year's pick of the litter so far, and I cannot recommend it enough. Provided you are up for its tragedy and spectacular and visceral charnel house set pieces. A+ 

Poster for the theatrical release.