
When a remake was announced it was tough to really give a shit. So many of these remakes--whether Horror or not-- are just garbage that are totally devoid or what made the originals beloved in the first place. The fact that we have to keep bringing up The Fly and The Thing as remakes that turned out better than the original is proof of how so many of them miss the mark.
But when Elijah Wood took up the part of Frank it changed things. He had a pretty good turn as a creep in Sin City, and it's not like Wood takes any old slop that comes down the pike. Things just got interesting.
This new version of Maniac doesn't reach the heights of what John Carpenter was able to do with The Thing From Another World, but it's better than all the cookie-cutter dreck that has been shoved down our throats for the past decade (I'm look at you Platinum Dunes).
What Maniac does that gets the most talk is film from a mostly POV perspective. 90% of the movie is seen through the eyes of Wood's Frank as he repairs antique mannequins by day, and murders women by night. Doing it this way could have so easily become a bad gimmick, but it works. Director Franck Khalfoun literally puts you inside the mind of a crazy fuck as he stalks his prey. When Frank stares at his next victim before following her, you feel like a creep.

Maniac does what most Horror movies don't anymore, it tries. In this lifeless, corporate, appealing-to-the-masses world we live in when it comes to movies, that's become more than enough to make something worth watching.
7.0 out of 10
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