IFC’s film Maniac, starring Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) was an innovative slasher film that, while holding some interesting production techniques, wasn’t as exciting or horrorific as one might hope. Wood was good in it, as was his supporting cast, but the film itself wasn’t as attention grabbing as it should have been.
Maniac is about a serial killer who works as a mannequin artist. He meets a young French woman, played by Nora Arnezeder (Safe House, The Words) who convinces him to help her with her art show. For some reason never fully explained, this releases some sort of insanity in the main character, who stalks her and tries to make her part of his weird manneguin-with-real-dead-women’s-hair collection that somehow ties into the fact that as a child he watched his mom have sex with many different men. The storyline didn’t always come together well, and the murders weren’t as gruesome as one would expect with IFC, but they still kept it interesting. Gore lovers. however, probably wouldn’t find the murder scenes worthwhile.
The innovation of the film was what kept me watching. Instead of the usual camera techniques, viewers watched from the serial killer’s own point of view, which I found intriguing once I got used to it. Viewers only saw what the killer saw, which was especially interesting when he was stalking his prey. Of course, one of the negatives of this is that the film’s biggest star was barely visible, but the director made sure to have plenty of mirror shots, reflections and other ways of keeping in the viewer’s mind that Elijah Wood was in the film.
Wood himself was terrific; he has never really been known as a murderer, yet in some of the mirror shots the look in his eyes was chilling. And Maniac featured plenty of beautiful young women, since they seemed to be his main prey.
Overall, I would rate this film 3/5 stars. It’s worth seeing, but only if there’s not a lot on television that night.
