Alexandre Ajas Maniac

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Movie
German title Alexandre Ajas Maniac
Original title Maniac
Country of production USA , France
original language English
Publishing year 2012
length 85:22 minutes (uncut) 83:11 minutes
Age rating FSK 18 (cut), SPIO / JK : no serious risk to young people (uncut)
Rod
Director Franck Khalfoun
script Alexandre Aja
Grégory Levasseur
C. A. Rosenberg
production Alexandre Aja
Thomas Langmann
William Lustig
music Robin Coudert
camera Maxime Alexandre
cut Baxter
Franck Khalfoun
occupation

Alexandre Ajas Maniac is an American - French psychological thriller from 2012 . It's a remake of the 1980 film Maniac .

action

Frank Zito from Los Angeles has had a troubled relationship with women since childhood. The shy-looking restorer moves out of mannequins at irregular intervals in order to tow away, kill and scalp a chance acquaintance. He then drapes the trophies on mannequins in his home workshop and communicates with them. When he seriously threatens to fall in love with a pretty photographer named Anna, his double life is out of joint. Frank kills Rita, a friend of Anna. Before scalping her, he talks to her as if she were his mother. After Anna later finds out that Frank killed her friend, the two get into a fight. Martin, her neighbor, appears in her apartment to save Anna. However, he is killed with a meat knife in a fight by Frank. Anna is kidnapped by Frank. There is another fight between the two, with Frank being severely wounded several times. Anna is wounded and then killed and scalped by Frank. Before Frank dies of his severe injuries in his apartment, he hallucinates. In his fantasies, his mannequins turn into his victims, who tear him apart. Anna is wearing a wedding dress. Later a SWAT team turns up, which Frank finds dead.

Interesting

When Lucie dances with Frank, her "favorite song" plays Goodbye Horses by Q Lazzarus. The use of this song alludes to the thriller The Silence of the Lambs (film) , in which the antagonist "Buffallo Bill" hears that song in several scenes.

The scene in which Frank first chases the victim through the subway station and then scalps it in the parking lot is a homage to the original. Because the reflection in Frank's car door with the knife and scalp in hand looks like the cover of the original film.

Shortly before Anna tells Frank that she has a boyfriend, they watch the expressionist silent film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari , whom Anna Frank describes as "the first real horror film".

background

The film was released in German cinemas on December 27, 2012. Like many remakes of seized horror films, this one also passed the FSK exam unscathed and received "No youth release". As part of the stricter picture carrier test (DVDs and Blu-ray), the film did not receive an FSK seal and could only be published in Germany in abbreviated form. The rights holder then turned to the SPIO Legal Commission ( SPIO / JK for short ) for examination. There they found the seal "no serious harm to young people" to be sufficient, after which the film could be released uncut on DVD and Blu-ray. In July 2014, the Federal Testing Office for Media Harmful to Young People (BPjM) finally announced that the film had been indexed on List B. The public prosecutor or a court still had to clarify whether the film actually violated §131 StGB (glorification of violence). The film had been confiscated in Germany since March 2015. The distributor Ascot Elite no longer offered retailers the uncut versions of the film since the end of July 2014. The seizure was lifted in February 2020.

Reviews

“The film largely sticks to the plot of the original, but stages it differently: It largely adopts the perpetrator's point of view, which leads to blatant scenes of violence, but stands in the way of the intended psychogram of a madman. An excessively brutal imitation, only bound to the Gore effect. "

- Lexicon of international film

“[…] The end is then the very special bang and signed by such intense symbolism that a cold shiver runs down the spine of the viewer, because it remains a fallacy: humanity becomes a static facade, everything illusory intervenes and leaves the two levels merge. There is only loneliness, death and the silent cry for love. "

- CinemaForever

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schnittberichte.com: Maniac remake uncut in German cinemas
  2. ↑ schnittberichte.com, accessed on June 30, 2014
  3. ↑ schnittberichte.com, accessed on April 7, 2019
  4. ↑ schnittberichte.com, accessed on August 9, 2014
  5. ↑ schnittberichte.com, accessed on February 20, 2020
  6. ↑ Alexandre Ajas Maniac. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  7. ↑ Maniac Filmkritik, Pascal Reis, CinemaForever ( Memento from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive )