30 NIGHTS OF NIGHT, Night 7: MANIAC (2012)

William Lustig's 1980 slasher Maniac is not a film that needed a remake, or to be made in the first place, for that matter.  It was one of those hack-em-up pictures that were a dime a dozen in the early '80s, in which insecure men with mommy issues carved up innocent women for our enjoyment.  All that set that one apart were the gore effects, decently done by Tom Savini, of Living Dead series fame.  I remember a ridiculous scene in which Savini played both a victim and the stand-in for the killer, and technically shot himself in the face.

This slick remake stars Elijah Wood as the killer, Frank, a mannequin shop owner who stalks and murders women by night, and adds them to his collection.  Though it's about as perfunctory as the original, director Franck Khalfoun and writers Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur handle the characters with surprising sensitivity and sympathy.  The murders here are just as grisly, the victims also mostly women, but while the first film objectified women, this one is about the objectification of women.

The gimmick that this remake throws in is that the entire movie is seen from Frank's point of view.  We see each murder through his eyes as he commits it.  We rarely see him except in mirrors, and in a few carefully placed shots in which the point of view seems to drift away and observe him, as seemingly does his own mind.

This motif works because Khalfoun commits to it and never cheats.  He also never shies away from any of the graphic murder scenes; as Frank watches his own actions, we must as well.  The gore, created by "The Walking Dead's" Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger, are astonishingly real and effective.

There is an overarching story in which Frank meets and falls in love with an artist (Nora Arnezeder), whom he believes might be more than just another mannequin.  Otherwise, the film is mostly a series of vignettes in which Frank seeks to satisfy his homicidal urges.  There's a silly sub-plot about the Oedipal origin of Frank's obsession, a holdover from the original film that's unnecessary here.  It runs out of steam after a while, as the murders grow a bit repetitive.

Still, Maniac is substantially better than the kind of brutal slasher from which it draws its inspiration.  Wood is flawed and appealingly pathetic as the killer.  The women he obsesses over aren't merely knife fodder, but appear to lead lives that exist off screen.  This is a movie about a man who stalks and kills women, but its women surprisingly are not there merely to be killed.

** 1/2 out of ****