Maniac (2013)

Sadly Over-hyped

Fantastic!

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It was thrilling to watch 4 the first 10 minutes. But it went downhill for the next 1 hour 10 minutes. Yes it was nice from 'fantasy' point of view. Yet it failed viewers frm reality stance. I was left baffled with how this movie effectively made the entire enforcement bodies such as police and detectives looked like a complete fool, or useless. Those murders were poorly premeditated and should have left trails all over the place with DNAs, CCTV evidence, chatroom conversations etc!!! How he got away with it was beyond my comprehension. How this movie won awards, certainly beyond my imagination. Not 2 mention the way that rope dancer running away frm the train station to the car park while she should have called the police with her mobile phone have made this movie looked far more idiotic. This movie should have its title changed to 'Scary Movie 6'

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

I feel like I only do reviews for movies I dislike, or at least feel really strongly about. Maniac is definitely one of those movies. This movie just rubbed me the wrong way. It was too gory. Like way way way WAY too gory. I know gore is an art form and it takes talent to make it look good, but there is no way that you can possibly justify showing me three gruesome and detailed scalpings and a a scene of a man puking up what looks like dogfood and expect me to enjoy that. There's no reason for it to be in the film. It's pretty gross but mainly its just obnoxious. The first person view this movie goes for is cool and pretty well done, but it definitely leads to some issues. This movie has some terrible voiceovers, like when Frank is at a date the girl says multiple things without her mouth ever moving. There's also a scene where Frank punches somebody (complete with the generic thwack sound) without his arm ever moving. These problems with the first person don't completely ruin the effect, and it even has some nice transitions into third person. However, this movies sh!t acting by nearly all characters, weak story, overused and pornographized use of gore, all make this movie not worth watching. It's not even fun to watch as just as a straight up murder spree type film cause of the sh!tty forced story between Elijah Wood and the random @ss girl he falls in love with that takes up too much time. Don't watch this movie

I watch a LOT of horror, from quality to sh*t and I generally try to look for the positive aspects in even the poor ones, but I have my standards (as I do with every other genre, horror doesn't just get a free pass although I am more lenient in suspending belief). I do have my limits as to what I'm willing to believe or take seriously ...First of all, the first person thing has been done to death at this point and really doesn't add much to this specific movie. Nothing original there.... that being said, the cinematography is beautiful and the soundtrack is awesome. That's about all this movie has going for it.The acting is pretty atrocious by most of the cast including Elijah Wood himself. The dialogue seems so forced and unnatural by him and the first few females he encounters. It all sounds incredibly scripted and forced....and corny.The intro to the movie starts out by showing the night lights of the city, people mingling and walking around, city full of life...yet for some reason every time he decides to stalk a female in this very lit up city, not a single soul is anywhere within sight conveniently enough, regardless of desperate screams and plodding chase scenes. It feels incredibly silly. This is not a minor detail and cannot be brushed aside. The only people that seem to be conveniently around at JUST the right moments are the beautiful females he encounters, who regardless of how unsettling and creepy (Elijah) looks and behaves, somehow become attracted/infatuated with him and hand themselves over on a silver platter. There's one scene specifically where the girl is asking him to grab her breasts and he does...only thing is his hands have cuts, bruises, dirt, scabs and everything else you can think of, yet she doesn't bat an eye.I found the entire film to be rather pretentious, and each scene more predictable than the previous. I was incredibly bored and rather irritated. I tried to like it, but it is just not a very good horror flick...