Maniac (2012)

Frank Zito (Elijah Wood) is a terribly insane man whose delusions about his mother compel him to murder and scalp the women he desires. He brings the scalps home and staples them to his collection of mannequins, creating a sort of harem of "girlfriends."

Frank meets Anna, a beautiful French artist who is working on a project involving photos of mannequins. When she sees the restored vintage mannequins Frank has in the store he lives behind, she asks to borrow them for an installation of her art. With some trepidation, he agrees, and provides her with a van full of mannequins without faces, just as she requested.

At her show, she projects images of her own face on the blank mannequin heads, and you know that's going to mess with Frank's head. And Frank's head is already messed up enough, thank you very much.

The remake of William Lustig's 1980 slasher classic was written and produced by Alexander Aja, whom horror fans will know from Haute Tension and the remake of The Hills Have Eyes. Aja and director Franck Khalfoun have taken the bold, unusual step of presenting the majority of Maniac in the first person perspective. This puts us very uncomfortably inside the mind and behind the eyes of the killer. We follow his gaze as he assesses, stalks, and kills his targets, only occasionally glimpsing Frank in a reflection.

When we do see him, Elijah Wood makes the perfect non-threatening killer. He looks the part of an artist. More than that, he looks like a child wearing a penciled-in beard. He has sweet, soulful eyes when he is hopeful about a normal life with Anna, but they turn cold and haunting when his delusions overtake him. The effect is absolutely chilling.

The movie features a pulsing, synth-heavy original soundtrack and an evocative selection of songs from Ave Maria to "Goodbye Horses" (a wonderfully creepy 80s track you may remember from The Silence of the Lambs). It all sets a darkly energetic mood that utterly encapsulates Frank and his twisted compulsions.

Visceral, unsettling, gory, and cringe-inducing - this is the scariest slasher movie I've ever seen. I was biting my knuckles for the whole last twenty minutes. Horror veterans who want a new take on the sub-genre shouldn't miss Maniac. It's the best slasher movie in years.

And holy crap, there's a reflection shot of Frank standing up after a kill that looks exactly like the infamous poster of the original movie. Bravo, Maniac. Amazing.