Maniac is a remake of the 1980 William Lustig classic slasher of the same title. Lustig didn't just approve, he also produced this remake, helmed by P2 director Frank Khalfoun. What makes Maniac really stand out, however, is the casting of Elijah Wood as the titular maniac, replacing the overweight and middle-aged Joe Spinell of the original. While the plot remains very similar, the new casting recasts (pardon the pun) the entire meaning of the film with impressive results.
Wood plays 'Frank,' a mannequin collector/restorer in New York. He was raised by his single mother, who whored around for cash and/or pleasure, often bringing men home where little Frank saw way too much. Frank now has a very ambivalent relationship to sexuality. Specifically, he likes to scalp women and place their hair on mannequins instead of screw them. One day the photographer Anna takes an interest in his mannequins and seems to offer womanhood some redemption at the same time.
A film like Maniac will never come anywhere near the Oscars or any other glitzy award ceremony. Yet, Elijah Wood's performance is as deserving of those awards as any other modern performance. Even as hampered as Wood is by the mostly-POV photography, where we share Frank's eyes, he still allows us to share Frank's anxieties, joys, and anguish through his voice and the few mirror shots Khalfoun provides. Wood proves, again, that he is the most versatile actor around, and easily one of the most talented we have.
The decision to force the film's viewpoint to be almost entirely Frank's was certainly a risky one. The intention, of course, is to make the audience sympathize and even empathize with a sadistic serial killer. Initially, however, the effect is alienating and uncomfortable. As the film's tensions increase and it hurtles toward an emotional climax, the discomfort is long forgotten. Wood's performance and Khalfoun's deft direction make it work. I'm still not sure it was necessary; but it works. By Maniac's end, I was entirely on Frank's side. I hoped not for the survival of a 'Final Girl,' but for her brutal slaughter. That became the happy ending: the serial killer protecting his heart from the awful people in the world. What kind of relationship between art and morality does this illustrate? I don't know. But Michael Haneke wishes he'd made Funny Games this well.
That is not to suggest the the film's psychology is insightful. Coming from the pen of Alexandre Aja, rewriting for Joe Spinell, there is little psychological realism present. Horror film psychology has always been a little glib, from the weird videos in Peeping Tom and the instant diagnosis at the end of Psycho on. Maniac pushes this to a point at which it has gone beyond even touching reality. The psychology of Maniac is fantasy psychology, where blood-spattered mannequins wearing fly-covered scalps can be models of purity for a psychosexually tortured psyche. I empathized with Frank and even rooted for him because, despite the near camp moments of fantasy psychology or maybe even because of them, there is a strongly pronounced emotional reality to the disturbed Frank, a wounded core that does not seem beyond redemption.
The bottom line is, Maniac makes very few missteps of any kind. It is a traditional slasher film made in 2012 that exceeds nearly any of the modern, ultra-violent slasher films made in the last decade-and-a-half. It also happens to be one of the finest horror film remakes I've ever seen. Khalfoun went way beyond what he'd done with the average P2, and Aja as screenwriter reiterates his ability to remake his favorite horror films. Bravo to all the talent involved.
Maniac (2012) - 3.5/4
The Devil's Rock (2011) - 3/4
Nazi occultism is always an interesting subject and certainly ripe material for a horror movie. I am inclined to think the occult tendencies in the Third Reich were purely decorative and symbolic. But that doesn't make it any less fascinating for a curious imagination. Paul Campion writes and directs The Devil's Rock, a low-budget, three-or-four actor movie that tries to capture the drama of the individual Ally soldier against the Reich and this its most intimidating aspect.
The Devil's Rock concerns Captain Ben Grogan, an unfortunate New Zealand soldier who accidentally washes up on a beach in the Channel Islands prepared to kick ass. He soon discovers it's the wrong beach in more ways than one. On this island, Nazi occult experiments have summoned a succubus that the Nazi Colonel hoped to control for the glory of the Reich. And the Colonel has lost control.
Where Campion really excels and shows an incredible talent is crafting, in a very limited set with only three actors, the impression of a much larger world. The geographical and historical sense of the mid-WW2 world is created purely out of good dialogue well-delivered. More than that, through dialogue with the demonic succubus and the German occultist, he gives reality to the demonic planes that we of course never get to see.
Where Campion does not excel is in generating real suspense. He has all the elements: a mysterious screamer locked in an equally mysterious room, a bunker filled with dead bodies, a highly claustrophobic set. Unfortunately, Campion wastes very little time revealing to us that the woman locked away is a demon. He makes an effort, after the reveal, to craft some psychological thrills in that the demon looks like Grogan's dead wife. But we already know she's a demon! We've seen her red with black, curled horns--like Tim Curry in Legend. The reveal should have come nearer the film's end, leaving us to wonder if the Germans didn't somehow resurrect Grogan's wife or indeed to just wonder what the hell is going on. The audience, namely myself, should have been kept wondering and then the psychological thrills would have really worked. We would have been wary for Grogan as he was drawn to his wife. As it stands, the only suspense is between the Nazi and Grogan.
When I checked Campion's filmography to research this review, I was surprised to find that I had already seen one of his shorts some time before The Devil's Rock was released. A minimal, strange film called "Eel Girl" that is actually a bit more suspenseful than The Devil's Rock, but based on the same notion. A scientist is sexually drawn to an attractive monster-girl kept in an aquarium. As he gives in to his lusts, the eel girl stretches her mouth to devour the scientist whole.
Reflecting on the similarities between "Eel Girl" and The Devil's Rock, I wonder if I didn't find Campion's problem. You see, there are some people who have peculiar fetishes, one of which is called 'vore.' Vore fetishism is finding sexual stimulation in seeing someone devoured by something: a monster, a snake, a demon, whatever. There are also some men who find monster-girls particularly arousing as they appear in horror movies, comic books, and Japanese cartoons. The thought of being devoured by these monster girls really interest some men. Campion is a clever enough director, I wonder if he didn't knowingly sacrifice suspense for his own interest in monster-girl devouring. That would be a foolish move, since vore fetishism has very niche appeal.
Whatever the reason for the blunder, it does leave The Devil's Rock limping. What could have been one helluva feature film debut is more of a promise of great things to come than a great thing in itself. The Devil's Rock is still impressive for its limitations and a decent horror film in its own right.
Carrion Creativity: The Sources of Evil Dead
Evil Dead (2013) was not a candidate for review on Lair of the Boyg. With 404 external reviews already on Internet Movie Database, mine would be a drop in a lake. Had I written a review, I would have expressed an equivocal appreciation. While I was disappointed with the film as a remake or quasi-sequel to Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981), the film's gushy, violent energy made it a fairly entertaining horror film. In other words, without the Evil Dead label, I would have branded it a decent but unspectacular horror experience.
Instead of writing that review, however, I've decided to reflect on something more difficult to concretize. I started thinking about Sam Raimi's masterpiece, Evil Dead II (1987) and its relationship to its milieu. One hurdle is separating the myth from the reality. ED II is the first horror film I remember watching and it scared the snot out of me. I became certain Henrietta had moved out of her cool, dank fruit cellar into my cramped and toy-bestrewn closet. This film had a huge impact on nearly every horror fan and many cinema buffs, and is now referenced in their films more readily than any of the Hollywood classics. The layer of myth in all this being that Evil Dead II was offering something brand new, a barrage of original ideas this upstart independent filmmaker in the middle of Nowhere, USA invented himself.
The thing about Evil Dead II is, if you really study it and other good horror films made around the same time, you start to see that Sam Raimi's genius is really more synthetic than it is inventive. Rather than make such a statement and move on with a few examples, I would like to really examine the issue.
The first case in point is House (1986), Steve Miner's minor classic of '80s horror, just a step or two short of greatness. House, much like Evil Dead II, is a high-energy assault of rubber monsters, insanity, and goofy humor. House's own psychological seriousness and inability to anchor its insanity with some concrete explanation is what ultimately kept it from greatness. However, the techniques and ideas Steve Miner and Fred Dekker deployed were gleefully absorbed by Raimi. The dexterity of House's monsters, like its winged skull-creature, able to grab and use a shotgun, is mimicked in ED II by Henrietta in her skull-monster form. House also contains the all-important tool shed, where both its protagonist Roger and Evil Dead II's Ash find their shotguns. The scene of animated inanimates in the Evil Dead II cabin is an amplification of House's animated mounted fish and flying garden tools. House even contained an evil severed hand making all sorts of mischief.
The second case in point is Hooper-Spielberg's Poltergeist (1982), a masterpiece of horror filmmaking in its own right, one of the greatest haunted house films if only for throwing everything Spielberg could invent at the characters and audience. Poltergeist's chaotic climax includes an animated tree crashing through the children's bedroom window and grabbing the little boy with a giant tree hand. Evil Dead II's chaotic climax also includes an animated tree, which crashes a giant tree hand through the wall of the cabin to grab Ash. After the tree attacks in Poltergeist, a vortex between worlds opens up, sucking the tree to wherever. In ED II, as Annie finishes reading the incantation, a huge vortex opens, sucking the tree to wherever. The shots of the vortexes are almost identical. As the vortex opens, Carol-Anne is almost pulled to the other side as she grips her bed. Similarly, in ED II, Ash grabs a board as the vortex begins pulling him in. Both end up getting pulled to the other side. The finale of Evil Dead II, where the face of the demon manifests itself in the doorway, also borrows from the moment in Poltergeist where Craig T. Nelson pulls one of the more alarming denizens of the other side through the closet door. Poltergeist also contains flying, animated inanimates that could have provided equal influence on Raimi's animated lamps and chairs in ED II.
Other, smaller elements of Evil Dead II come from all over. The idea for the book and the demons it unleashes comes from the very strange 1970 film, Equinox. The skewed shots Raimi uses, suggesting the cabin being viewed from a presence only partially in our plane of reality, is a development of the technique Robert Wise used to make the house in The Haunting (1963) seem alive. With some effort, I'm sure several more sources could be found, perhaps even one for the famous roving camera movements, or 'demoncam.'
Nearly every element of Evil Dead II comes from some other source. Raimi took every cool technique he saw being effectively used in other horror movies and he made sure to use them in his own movie to thrill, scare, and entertain. This is not to detract from Evil Dead II. The film is a masterpiece, in a very real sense the Citizen Kane of horror movies. Just as Orson Welles had done with Citizen Kane, Sam Raimi took the best elements of style and the best ideas in horror at the time, and he deployed them all together for the first time. They were not used willy-nilly, as the effects in House tend to be, but very deliberately toward crafting a supreme experience of horror intensity.
If we return to Evil Dead (2013), I wonder if it had been made with the same synthetic genius as Evil Dead II, would it have been any better? Perhaps the case could be made that it would be just the same. If the films championed as the best of our time are James Wan's Insidious and Xavier Gens's Frontier(s), we're aesthetically impoverished. Insidious was a fun ghost movie, but it really invents nothing. If we really have become conditioned to see it as our The Haunting, Poltergeist, or even House, our demands on horror filmmakers have become too light. Evil Dead II was possible because of the general fertility of imagination in horror filmmaking at the time. Raimi was borrowing, yes, but he was borrowing fragments of genius.
The best Evil Dead (2013) gets is in the bloody final fifteen minutes, a great deal of which is borrowed from Xavier Gens's Frontier(s) and a little from Paco Plaza's [REC]. Both of these are very good films, but of the two only [REC] can be credited with real inventiveness. Frontier(s) is little more than a Gallic, very bloody Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We need filmmakers to take chances again, to try to come up with new ways of scaring us and disturbing us. We need new techniques, new styles, new camera movements, new sounds, new sights. Then, when another Sam Raimi does come along, he'll be able to steal from the best. Because right now, I don't think another Evil Dead 2 would be possible--we don't have enough good ideas to steal.
