SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

michaeltrivedi I have been giving out a lot of 7's lately, so I am going to purposefully give this a 6. It definitely has it's boring points, but it depicts a serial killer in Los Angeles, bored with ordinary life. I can't really say it's a good movie, but it does it's job. It was fun to watch, but it wouldn't even be in my top 10 random horror movies to watch on a random Wednesday night.6 Stars

manisimmati Los Angeles. A young man named Frank Zito lurks through the streets at night to ambush and kill attractive women. He scalps them and staples their hair to the mannequins in his apartment. When he meets the beautiful fledgling artist Anna, for the first time in his life he feels something like love. But is a perverted psychopath like him even able to connect with a woman in a normal way?In 1980 William Lustig made a movie that dared to dive into the troubled mind of a mass murderer and shocked its audience with explicit, seemingly tasteless imagery: "Maniac". In 2012 the French horror expert Alexandre Aja ("Haute Tension", "The Hills Have Eyes") produces a remake of the controversial slasher classic. Director Franck Khalfoun focuses on one stylistic gimmick: He films (almost) everything from the psycho's perspective. We as an audience are forced to share Frank's demented vision. We become dirty stalkers ambuscading innocent women. That's very disturbing, especially because the moments before the actual murders are strangely suspenseful, entertaining even.But after the death of several women, the effect wears off and you begin to wonder: What's the point of this? Sure, Khalfoun tries to psychologize the killer, but these attempts remain crude and somewhat stereotypical. We aren't able to sympathize with the character anyway, so it might have been better to keep his motives a mystery. That would have made the experience even more unsettling. One theme of "Maniac" is the objectification of women from the subjective standpoint of a man. The women in this story are reduced to mere mannequins. That certainly makes you think, but the movie isn't meta enough to reflect its own objectification. It remains a slasher flick, after all - albeit a very effective and unconventional one.Elijah Wood ("Lord of the Rings") does a great job as Frank, who seems shy and charismatic, but really is a sicko. Nora Arnezeder as the French artist is much more than just a sweet love interest. It's a shame that the screenplay doesn't give these two characters the depth they deserve. The writers rely heavily on the expressive POV shots, but these alone don't explain much. They certainly don't replace profound writing, which is lacking here. The killing scenes are extremely graphic. But I wonder why the camera leaves Frank's POV when things get really disgusting. Is it because Khalfoun doesn't want to tax the audience too much? Or does the gore look better from a distance? I don't know, but either way this decision seems inconsistent with the premise of the movie."Maniac" is a thrilling experiment, but it's not as clever as it pretends to be. Still, as a stylish slasher movie it works pretty well. Give it a shot, but don't expect a genre-defining film.

Bealive me I am not writing a review because unlike the others (not pointing fingers and i apologize if i offend) i don't want to spoil anything and don't want to say anything majorly about the story I see that people rate it for something it isn't and i feel like that is a problem. I just feel like people should know at least what I gathered from this film. I have not watched the original but what i have understood is that people seemed irritated that some "proffesional" reviewers wrote it off as a women hating, violent movie and nothing more.Now i have read some of the reviews for this and a lot of people say the same thing. Just a violent nasty and judges/rates it on that. IT Isn't. In fact this is one of the saddest movies i have seen. I think its wrong to say that it isn't violent. It has violence that makes you want to turn away. But its not about that. It doesn't rely on violence. The main character is a troubled man that tries to live his life, dealing with his issues. He doesn't have anyone and doesn't know how to deal with them alone.Its a 1st person drama/thriller with a sad but beautiful techno music to blend in with the neon lighted feel of this movie. The acting of Elijah wood is brilliant in that he mostly needs to act with his voice and not his face. The story is sad and i cant help but feel sad for the main character much like The Voices staring Ryan Reynolds. The movie focuses so much on there psychological problems that it just comes of as tragic and sad. This isn't a horror movie with no story and disposable characters. This is a character built, character driven sad movie that is beautiful both visual and story wise.

Temujn Dagvaa First of all my rate to this film is 9 out of 10 and i will explain why i rated this movie, higher.Accordin to people's review they're all saying one thing is missing,theme is bad,bad plot etc...For me this film is just masterpiece.Because its atmosphere , its soundtrack and acting are just freaked me out and editors really showed the bittersweet life of maniac and made us feel the world of psycho!!! I would say this film really showed us the act of a psychopath,their feeling ,their aspect of life and how they perceive society and how they see the world and i would say that this film helped me to see the world from their eyes and it's not just a thriller crime movie its a piece of scene how some hidden society see the world.And about Elijah Wood, he's the right person to take this role.I really wanna let know to other people who's not satisfied or not liked this film is that they don't feel deeply of its hidden beauty, of a psychopath mind like a beautiful mind.