Maniac

Maniac

Directed by:  Franck Khalfoun

Horror, 2012

France/USA, 93 min

Of all the films to remake why pick one of the dirtiest, sleaziest, vilest mothers of violent films of all time? Why step into the realm of the majestic Joe Spinell, and even try to remake a gritty classic that stands firm on it’s own exploitative values? I’d go as far as claiming that Bill Lustig’s original Maniac is an institution! So why remake a masterpiece?

Sound familiar? Sound like the same discussions we have every time one of our favorite “olden Goldie’s” is rehashed, pimped and dolled up for a new generation? Well to be honest, I find that a lot of remakes do look absolutely fabulous, they spark and jump and shake and kick some ass. Yes they do, and I like quite a lot of the remade stuff. Not in the same way that I love the original sources, but some remakes are visually worth the effort.

Maniac tells the sad tale of reclusive Frank [Elijah Wood], a lone guy who is happiest spending his time alone in his workshop renovating antique mannequins. But Frank also hides a complicated dark side, at night he stalks the streets of New York, murdering young women and taking trophy scalps to the person he talks to back in his small workshop flat. One day a young photographer, Anna [Nora Arnezeder], steps into his workshop and becomes spellbound by the mannequins he has on display. Frank’s world is about to change, but is it for the better?

I think we can all agree that the remakes look fantastic and certainly do rock, but what they miss, in their perfected and polished exterior, is the naïveté of the originals. You can’t remake, reboot or reclaim the naïveté of the originals. There’s magic in those originals that we believe in, because of the flaws, the errors, the raw and rough camera work, the not perfect but effective special effects – you know what I mean, back then stuff looked over the top fantastic, now it’s all about looking far to real for comfort - the dubious acting, a magic that occurs when stuff just comes together. You can’t recreate that magic, that naïveté, it just isn’t possible when one looks at a capsule of caught time, and attempt to mimic it, because there’s to much intention put into the imitation. It lacks the magic and the naïveté that fell into place in the original. Hence remakes which never make the same impact.

But still, a lot of remakes do get the job done, despite their refined surface, forced backstory to create empathy for the “monster”, and high-end technical achievements. And sometimes they propel newcomers back into the back catalogue. It’s like new formula drinks; tastes familiar but doesn’t have the same kick it had when you sipped it the first time around

So back to the initial question, how the hell does one remake the Spinell/Lustig epic sleazebag Maniac? The way Aja and Khalfoun have decided to take this is by continuously show the movie from Frank’s point of view. It’s a more visual expedition into the mind of a Maniac, in a completely new way. (Or not, as this is also the gimmick of William Powell’s Peeping Tom made back in 1960) Although it does work, it only takes a short while to get used to it, and then the audience undoubtedly will be inside Frank’s head.

Let’s talk about Elijah Wood. We all pulled a face when they heard Wood was to portray the character made iconic by Joe Spinell. How could cuddly cute, squeaky clean Wood take on the part of an all-time fave maniac? You know when Robin Williams played that sinister dude in OneHourPhoto and he really crepeed you out because you where used to seeing him be a funny guy and the shock of seeing him being malicious and sadistic totally packed a powerpunch to the balls. Well that’s similar to the odd feeling that Wood brings to the part – there’s something off kilter, and Wood manages to make it work.

Although the main question posed here is - does it work? Well the answer has to be both yes and no. Khalfoun and Aja (along with writing team Grégory Levasseur – who has written the majority of Aja’s films with him - and C.A. Rosenberg) don’t really bring much new with their remake. On the other hand would we have wanted something completely different? Steve Miner’s Day of the Dead comes to mind, a good enough fun traditional zombie flick, but has fuck all to do with the movie that shares a name with it… which was provocative to a lot of fans, if it’s not Day of the Dead, don’t call it Day of the Dead. This is not the case with Maniac, it’ still primarily Spinell and Lustig’s Maniac with the traditional “Aja addition” placing his own unique moment into a familiar setting and film, hence creating Maniac revamped in a 2012 dressing. But that’s about it. I know the story, I know the beats, I know the key scenes, and I know how the movie is going to climax, and no real surprises are in store for me. BUT; if you are a newcomer to Maniac, this is one sick, slick movie that will disturb you, freak you out and shake you up.

What is new then? Well apart from the POV camerawork, which works really effectively, especially in some of the violence towards the camera scenes, the only real new addition is the contemporary and obligatory genesis story. We are taken back into Frank’s childhood and show us what formed him, what set him on his quest to reconstruct his mother. Like the original, there’s a pretty weak love story that circles around Anna – the photographer, and Frank. But where the original was so much more cold and plain observant, this one tries to generate empathy for Frank. It’s done both through the childhood trauma years, and through the way he believes he has a shot at Anna only to be completely crushed when her boyfriend is revealed. The POV shot helps to lure us as an audience in to this corner, and works as a tool to generate emotion for the Frank character.

I’m still not convinced that we need backstory and emotions built so solidly in favor of “monsters”, but it is a smart way to go when the movie actually is about the Antagonist! I think that’s why all the effort is put on empathizing monsters; it’s some kind of ironic twenty-first century hipster positioning. The classic Antagonist has become the Protagonist; kids today are raised on therapy, parental pampering and a complete lack of demands placed on them. They don’t have to think for themselves, they crave explanations. Where a generation of old-school graduates where raised on unpredictability, stone cold antagonists, and the mystery of not knowing, new times demand new approaches, that’s why all of our favorite monsters, maniacs and beasts these days are all presented with character explanatory backstory hence loosing all their mystic power over the audience.

Maniac relies on its exploration of the Frank character, and the moments of grotesque malevolence. This is where the film delivers, as effects are tremendously realistic and whatever fantastic gore the original held, it's all exchanged for brutal nihilism this time around. The last act truly lets it rip, and as just mentioned, there are some really impressive effects and things do get rough indeed. 

Technically the movie looks great: Maxime Alexandre’s cinematography is dark and moody as most of the films he’s shot for Aja previously, but just like most remakes, it looks to damned good. Editor magnifique, Baxter, has provided yet another tight and ferociously edited movie. Never letting scenes or takes run to long, but to the point and out as soon as what’s delivered. I really like the soundtrack by “ROB” which definitely has a neo-French sound to it, and isn’t to far from the Double Dragon soundtracks  Francois Gaillard’s neo-Gialli have been so effectively using.

To sum it up: Aja and Khalfoun’s Maniac is a decent take on a classic slasher, using some semi-new tricks to somewhat success. Special effects are top notch, and an emotional roller-coaster is to be found if one wants it. At the current point in time Maniac isn’t a unique movie any more, there’s more than one nihilistic serial killer film out there, and stuff that definitely pushes the envelope further, although this time around it does have an effective empathizing approach to the subject matter. But Aja and Khalfoun’s Maniac looks fantastic, has an awesome soundtrack and get's the job done. If nothing else, this remake will drive a new audience down the path of history, and make them seek out Bill Lustig’s extraordinary shocker from 1980, at least then, they won’t be missing out on one of genre cinemas best head shot moments.

Livide

Livide

Directed by: 
Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury

France, 2011

Horror/Drama/Fantasy, 88min

  

It may have been the best thing that ever happened to genre when french duo, famous for the tense and violent, À l'intérieur (Inside) 2007, Bustillo & Maury walked away from that proposed Hellraiser remake, saving them from the abyss of franchise (or reboot) hell. It could also be when they had the balls to ditch the Irish location, with planned English Dialogue version of Livide and simply rode tough through the storm of bureaucracy and cooperate bullshit to make their movie in their own vision. Because at the end of the day, Livide, is a stunningly emotional piece of cinema that taps right into old school gothic, eighties horror, that jaw breaking new wave of French nihilism, and classic European surreal fantasy.

Lucie Klavel [Chloé Coulloud], a young woman with plans to start working as a day nurse, spends her first day at her new job under the guidance of the more experienced Wilson [Catherine Jacob]. After visiting a gallery of patients, she manages to make contact with the one patient that Wilson can’t. The last patient of the day is a comatose woman, Mrs. Jessel [Marie-Claude Pietragalla], who Wilson claims has a treasure hidden away in her large mansion. Later that night, incidentally Halloween night, Lucie tells her hardworking fisherman, but longing for something else, boyfriend William [Félix Moati] of the day and the secret treasure supposedly hidden away in Jessel’s mansion. Together with his brother Ben [Jérémy Kapone], the trio set off to the mansion intent on finding the treasure and getting new start in life. What they find definitely change’s their lives forever.

If I say things like, the atmosphere of Hammer films mixed with the scares of the recent reincarnation of modern horror, the set pieces of Dario Argento, the poetry of Jean Rollin, the surrealism of Jan Svankmeyer and previous violence of Bustillo & Maury, then you should have a pretty good idea of the trip Livide takes it’s audience on. 

           

From here on, spoiler alerts should be announced. I won’t split it wide open, but I will discuss certain moments in the movie, so keep that in mind. I’d prefer you come back after seeing this magnificent flick.

The first fifteen minutes are spent exploring the world and character of Lucie. Lucie is the main character, Lucie is the narrative, Lucie is the movie, establishing her is vital for the magic of Livid. In those first inaugurating minutes, we learn that she’s a sympathetic character through the way she interacts with the patients she and Wilson visit, even communicating with some that Wilson claims to be beyond contact. We later learn of her complicated relationship with her father, a man who only eight months after his wife’s death has chosen to have his new girlfriend move in with him and Lucie. Much to Lucie’s dismay. It’s at this point that we also come to empathize with Lucie, as she talks to the ghost of her dead mother [Beatrice Dalle, in her second film for Bustillo & Maury], and it’s revealed that her mother actually committed suicide. When the “heist” is in motion, Lucie feels regret and tries to halt the mission. She’s also the first to abandon the plan and try to get out of the Jessel mansion. All this gives an insight to Lucie, she’s a good girl – she’s a character with dimension, capable of making wrong and right decisions, doing bad and good, which also makes her more interesting and easier for us to empathize with. Lucie, is simply trying to get by, coping with her mourning, and finding her place in this complex world. A world in which she feels somewhat alienated. But I’ll return to that later on after I set you up for the transformation.

The setting of Halloween night, forebodes the strange events about to come… classic convention tells us that strange things happen on Halloween, serial killers come back to slaughter the few remaining relatives, Goth rock star wannabe’s come back from the grave to avenge murdered love ones, it’s the night of Samhain, and the night of the year when the supernatural and the physical world are the closest and it’s a night when we expect magical things to happen. The borders between the realms become more transparent on Halloween night. I feel that Halloween night is a key to reading Livide, as there’s some strange stuff on the road ahead, which becomes more acceptable with the magic of all hallows eve in mind. 

The film could be split up into three separate parts. The ordinary world, the horror/supernatural world, and the spiritual world. As said earlier, the first act takes time to establish the players. The second is amongst one of the most creepy and atmospherically acts of horror I’ve had the pleasure to watch in a log time. Small quirks and tricks make it an unnerving act that really delivers on the scares, horror and violence. The last act becomes metamorphosis, Halloween where boundaries are transparent and when magical things can happen.

The ordinary world is all about setting up what we need to know about Lucie, as mentioned above, her searching of something new, an alternative to the mournful, lack of respect, world that she lives in. This part works like clockwork. I love Lucie, and later after the transition into the supernatural realm, I want to grab her by the hand and save her from whatever lurks in the Jessel mansion.  The supernatural realm is where ghosts can jump out from the darkness, and in a way they do. Death is all around them. The three friends enter the dark realm of the Jessel’s gothic mansion and pretty soon find themselves confronted by entities of another world. The final act, the supernatural one is where Livide takes a bold step past anything you have ever seen before. This is where it boldly goes into surrealistic territory. Although with an open mind, you will read the movie correctly and will see the poetry of the violence and emotional release that comes through this act. It left me breathless, moved and with tears in my eyes in the same way that Jean Rollin’s La Rose De Fer (Iron Rose) 1973, or La Morte Vivante (The Living Dead Girl) 1982 affects me every time I watch them. 

The movie works through a lot of small incidents that I could easiest compare to Russian babushka dolls. They all open up to reveal something inside, they area all dependent on each other, and they safely store each other within. There is a delicate set up, early on, a call to adventure if we where to use Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler’s terminology. When Wilson understands that she has an ambitious young helper at her side, she test’s Lucie. Seeing Lucie communicate with the old man Wilson has lost all contact with, Wilson comes to an insight. So when she goes up to the Jessel mansion, she sternly tells Lucié to stay in the car. Being eager and curious Lucie obviously follows her up to the house a few minutes later. Classic gothic territory, Lucie wanders the dark creepy mansion, has a few shock moments, and finds the partially mummified, Mrs. Jessel, who’s kept alive by the machines by her bed side. At the side of the machines stands Wilson who praises Lucie's inquisitiveness and stamina. Here Wilson has tricked Lucie into the realm of Mrs. Jessel and continues to lure her further by telling her of the hidden treasure.  Wilson later returns in the break between act two and three, when the ritual is performed. Wilson is an important part of the movie and as mentioned above, she acts as a key between he various act, worlds and also ties the ritual together.

I can’t really talk about the ritual without spoiling the movie, so I’ll try not to, and perhaps mention it more as a metaphor for the change in life that Lucie wants. Also it see’s Jessel reach out for something she has lost. This is obviously a theme frequently used by Jean Rollin, and also why I can emotionally and intellectually connect this movie to his films. But one person’s desire can be another ones fall, and this dark twist works on several levels, watching the film a second time before sitting down to write this, I can feel that the movie becomes darker in it’s final act than I first thought it did, and despite the gut-wrenching atrocities we take part of, there is some form of poetic justice served.

There’s a lot of hidden symbolism in Livide, and several other reviews chose to compare the movie to Alice in Wonderland. I don’t really see that, as there’s only one clear referent to Alice in Wonderland, and that’s a demented tea party. At the same time, with the grotesqueness of the taxidermy and other oddities that make up the tea party, I choose to read this moment as a loss of childhood instead. A moment caught in time, preserved for all eternity, which when you see the movie will make perfect sense. Livide is riddled with detail and visually it's an amazing movie. I can't wait to lay my hands on a high def version of this film.

Livide contains at least two nods at Dario Argento’s Suspiria 1977. Both are perfect homages, and this is the correct way to do homages, not by naming characters after your favourite directors, but intelligently connecting one movie to another hence creating a bond between them. As soon as I saw the nod, I had an insight that Jessel was much more than the character we’d been shown so far. That moment is a stroke of genius in my opinion.

Baxter’s opening montage set’s not only a tone for the movie, but also recaps the movie in short, as there are several hidden keys in the images shown. The beach – If nothing else a homage to the late Jean Rollin and his long time fixation with returning to the beach of his childhood - but also a foreboding, and a key to understanding the moths of the movie. A moth figures in this opening montage, and although you don’t realize it at this point, the moth is a metaphor for the human soul.

The Second series of Jean Rollin evoking images are the lingering shots of the cemetery, and the image put in focus in the cemetery is Jesus Christ who just like Lazarus returned from the dead… Keep this in mind when you reach the last act, as this is significant. The final shots of the opening montage, right before we are introduced to Lucie, shows “missing” children signs. Apparently a large amount of children have gone missing in the village, and we will know why as the movie climaxes. At the end of the movie these initial images generate a terrifying rush of insight. What we have witnessed was not the first time the nocturnal rituals at the Jessel Mansion have been performed…

If there was one last piece of guidance I could offer to help you read this phenomenal movie, I'd say that you shoyuld think of Jessel and Lucie as polarized opposites. Look at their individual journeys through the movie and the reunification they both long for and you will see, at least one way of how to interpret the film.

With out doubt, a future landmark of European genre cinema, Livide is a daring movie, one of the most surreal and inventive this decade. It challenges its audience to take it’s trip through a visual cabinet of odd curiosities, demanding narrative and may just be the most poetic time you can have being scared! Livide is now one of my favorite contemporary pieces of genre cinema and I'm allready dying to return to it as I write. Luckily it's soon to get it's Scandinavian release from the good people NjutaFilms.

The Incident

The Incident

Aka: Asylum Blackout

Directed by: Alexandre Courtès

Usa/France/Belgium, 2011

Horror/Thriller, 85min

Sometimes the less you know of a movie before watching it, the better it serves you. In this world of information overload, we’re more than often already familiar with tone, theme, imagery, key shock moments and synopsis’s way before we enter the theatre, or stick that disc in the machine… Luckily for me, the brief research I did before watching The Incident was completely wrong, which set me up for a ride completely unlike the one I was prepared for.

It’s the late eighties. A bunch of mates, Max [Kenny Doughty], Ricky [Joseph Kennedy] and George [Rupert Evans], who all play in the same struggling Seattle grunge band, work in the kitchen of Sands sanitarium. During a heavy thunderstorm, there’s a power shortage leaving them, wardens and patients in the dark. That’s when the inmates kick up a riot, break free and go wild… and we all know what happens when the inmates take over the asylum…

The Incident may be an English language film and give the impression of being a generic American shocker, but it's not. It's more European than anything else, and I shit you not when I constantly say that French directors are solidly on their way to taking over the cinematic world of the horror genre. The list can go on for ever; Alexandre Aja, Pascal Laugier, Xavier Gens, David Moreau & Xavier Palud, Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury and now one half of music video duo Alex and Martin, Alexandre Courtès, takes the step over to feature films.

I really, really, like movies that take some time to establish the ordinary world, the people who live there, their traits, give dimension to their characters and all that jazz which makes me invest in the movie. The Incident does all this, and what surprised me is that the ordinary world is already in its ordinary state pretty creepy and eerie place, thanks to that remarkable location. There are no windows on the exterior shots of the asylum, and none in the interior shots either. This creates a intimidating feeling of claustrophobia, and it also inhibits us from making a mental map of the layout, making it easier to get lost well inside the asylum.

I often talk of the transition into the unnatural or the world where the ordinary is ruptured, and the way The Incident breaks through is brilliant. When the bulletproof glass separating inmates from staff is ripped out of it’s frame presenting the psychos with a free passage to the “other side” of the border/glass, you know there’s going to be trouble. A point of no return that makes an impression, and it does so through some very smart moves, and well-written script and timing. Hiding in the safety of the kitchen as the inmates hammer at the glass with rods, chairs and even a shelf, Max asks George for some reassurance that the inmates “cant break that window right?” Before George even has time to think about his reply the force of the inmates pushes the glass out of it’s frame and they now access the whole sanitarium. The actual border of “their side” and “our side” between patients and staff acts as a clear set of rules by which the asylum is controlled. As soon as rules are set in genre cinema we can break them, and the show can get on the road.

But why don’t they just get up and get the hell out one may ask. S. Craig Zahler’s script deals with that in two interesting ways, the first being the obvious, the power is out. But convention tells us that power shortages can always be overcome, back up generators, torches and lights or even lack of logic that makes broken stuff suddenly work. Well here it’s definitely off, there’s even a scene where head officer, J.B. [Dave Legeno] explains to the cooks what’s happened and why they simply can’t fix it. Not only the lights, but also the automated doors and the system that keep thing tightly locked. Then there’s the second interesting thing that the script does to the protagonist George… He’s been at the asylum since five in the morning, he played a gig the night before, there’s been earlier dialogue about the fact that they drink beers before and after shows, so with this in mind, on the day of the power shortage, we know that George is hung-over (shown in the weird imagery as he takes a shower that morning) he’s most likely suffering from lack of sleep, which will have effects on endurance (sloppy when packing up the delivery) his psychic state (snaps at Max during the serving of lunch) and physical state (is overrun by inmates several times during the walk back to lockdown). Weakening the protagonist is a move of genius, and that’s exactly what that late gig, early morning, lack of sleep trick is all about.

Establishing the threat! There’s something about Welsh actor Richard Brake’s stare that get’s under your skin. From his first scene and the way Laurent Tangy’s camera lingers on his face, there’s something sinister and unnerving in that stare, and this is used to perfection in The Incident. Slowly the Harry character is introduced. At first it’s merely the way he stares as George as he stands in line for his dinner. This escalates as he encourages other inmates to “spit out the meds”, and when all hell breaks loose, we can completely see why George choses Henry Green as his antagonist. The face-to-face confrontation that their “struggle” finally culminates in is an uncomfortable one as it doesn’t quiet play out as we are accustomed to. But it works, and it creates a creepy emotional state that the movie plays with in its final act. It sends shivers down my spine when genre breaks convention and goes elsewhere to explore other areas. I find that The Incident several times shows me one thing, but offers several possible interpretations... stuff that makes you go back to movies.

Darkness and lack of light play a huge part of The Incident. Together with the lack of orientation, the darkness adds to the above-mentioned claustrophobia. It also helps build tension, as we never really know who’s out there, behind us or even worse, right in front of us. The Incident uses the murky lighting, the shady corners and the blackness of adjacent corridors to have figures lurking in the dark. With the use of strange noises, incoherent patient dialogue and mad laughter, the audience never know what kind of attack, or who will pounce at them next, the tension builds and anxiety sets in.

Have you noticed that most of these French genre pieces clock in just below ninety minutes? Feel the pacing of the movies, and you will realize that there’s never a slow moment. Compared to others, many of the French flicks lack those awkward scenes that stop the flow of the movie. A lot, if not all of it, is due to editor extraordinaire Baxter. Baxter has cut his way through the crap – used in the most respectful way that is - on movies like Haute tension 2003, À l’intérieur 2007, Piranha 2010, Livide 2011 and Incident 2011. Hearing director’s talk about the way Baxter works is inspirational, because they all say that Baxter cuts everything he feel’s slows down the pace or is out of place.  Baxter is ruthless, and brings a whole new dimension to the films that these creative directors have written and shot. Baxter is in more than one way the epitome of the old three film rule which goes: You make three films, the one you write, the one you shoot, and the one you edit. He makes some damned hard but effective cuts in those movies he’s helped shape, and he truly shows the talent in Juxtaposition and effective editing. I’d easily watch a movie for the Baxter credit alone, as I find myself holding this person higher and higher in my book for each movie I see his craft perfecting on.

The version of The Incident I saw was an early screener, lacking pre- and end credits, which made the choice of Alice Cooper’s Only Women Bleed on static black screen after the last scene a weird but interesting experience. There’s an awesome atmosphere, to The Incident, and there where documented fainting’s at the premiere screening in Toronto! It has some simple but efficient effects, there’s also some more advanced ones that deliver a couple of really grim moments to satisfy the gorehounds as the survival horror turns to violent sadism in the last act. I liked this one, and I’ll go back to it again when I can see a real version, because I’m kind of certain that there’s an alternative way to read the events in the movie. The Incident is a fierce pressure cooker of tension that will have you biting your nails bloody! This one will get under your skin and have you looking over your shoulder when you are in dark corridors for a long time to come.

The Incident, coming soon from NjutaFilms!

Sorry couldn't find a trailer, but here's a bit of a mood reel...