Maniac

Name: Maniac
Director: Franck Khalfoun
Released: 2012

3.00

Synopsis

As he helps a young artist with her upcoming exhibition, the owner of a mannequin shop's deadly, suppressed desires come to the surface.

83
The Playlist
It'll get your blood pumping, before it starts spilling down your forehead.
80
Time Out
It still works its way under your skin and, by the time the highly disturbed Frank’s casualties come back to haunt him en masse, cuts sanguinely to the heart.
75
Slant Magazine
Its audio-visual overload testifies to a group of filmmakers' belief that some films are made to be remade.
60
Total Film
The scuzz-chic visuals, sleaze-synth score and deep-cutting gore are effective, and shooting from the killer’s POV proves a valid USP. But Wood, despite giving his all, cannot match Joe Spinell’s unhinged turn in the original: nightmares in a damaged brain indeed.
60
Variety
This merciless work of anti-entertainment is arguably admirable for being as disturbingly disgusting as it wants to be.
60
The Hollywood Reporter
Slasher-movie fans, however, need not be put off by the stylized camera work and arty patina: this is down and dirty genre filmmaking, and the various slaughters, excruciatingly detailed scalpings and other atrocities are no less gruesome because of the highfalutin approach.
60
Village Voice
Khalfoun makes the audience privy to Frank's memories, migraines, and jarring hallucinations of his mother's recalled abuses.
58
The A.V. Club
If it’s possible to be both impressed and appalled by a movie’s pull-no-punches savagery, Maniac earns that dubious distinction.