¡Qué horror! 2013
Candidate #9
MANIAC
(May 2012)
While Elijah Wood returned to the hobbit
thing in An Unexpected Journey, he
also revisited the whole serial killer thing in Franck Khalfoun’s redo of William
Lustig’s 1980 slasher, Maniac.
Written and
produced by Alexandre Aja (with help from frequent collaborators Grégory
Levasseur and Maxime Alexandre), this one has some brutally effective kills
courtesy of the awesome Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger of KNB EFX, plus it’s
largely presented to us from the POV of Wood’s Frank Zito, the titular psycho.
As far as
content and narrative elements, this is certainly not the most original of this
year’s ¡Qué horror! candidates thus far, but it’s got a
bunch of things going for it.
There’s that
tricky POV cinematography (from the aforementioned Maxime Alexandre), a score by
Rob* reminiscent of Georgio Moroder’s work for Paul Schrader’s Cat People remake, and an excellent
callback to two of Jonathan Demme’s films. (Note: Playing what has become the signature theme
to The Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo
Bill may not be the smartest choice for a music cue after you’ve just invited a
virtual stranger up to your apartment.)
* The Maniac score is available as a limited vinyl release from Mondo with "variant white vinyls randomly inserted."
How awesome is that?!
(Maniac UK quad courtesy of
impawards.com.)
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