{"id":5088,"date":"2025-12-08T10:23:02","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T09:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.horrortalks.com\/2025\/12\/08\/maniac-2012\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T10:23:02","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T09:23:02","slug":"maniac-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horrortalks.com\/en\/maniac-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Maniac (2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Visually incredible, brutally violent, Maniac<\/em> is a psychologically complex and horrific journey into the sick mind of a killer. Filmed entirely from the serial killer’s point of view, it is the remake, or rather, the “reinterpretation,” reinterpretation of the 1980s cult film considered by many to be the darkest, goriest slasher ever made. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The project, a French-American co-production, was the brainchild of Thomas Langmann, producer of the award-winning The Artist<\/em>, who, after buying the rights to the original film, turned the helm over to his friend Alexandre Aja, one of the most talented director\/producers of recent years in the horror genre, capable of “reinventing” cult films of the past. Aja put together his trusted and now proven team: Gregory Levasseur as co-writer and co-producer, Franck Khalfoun as director, and Maxime Alexandre as cinematographer. <\/p>\n

Much of the credit for the success of Lustig’s film goes to the main character Joe Spinell, whose charismatic and frightening performance brought to life one of the most perverse, insane, morbid, and violent characters ever seen. For this reason very brave was the team’s choice to shoot the film entirely in PoV, but in the end it proved more than apt, considering also the impossibility of replacing the figure of Joe Spinell in the collective imagination. But equally courageous was the choice of Hollywood actor Elijah Wood to accept such a disgusting and “uncomfortable” role at the same time. In the film, in fact, we see the actor only through mirrors or other reflective surfaces, but in those few sequences his performance is effective and insightful. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It was 1980, the golden age of horror cinema. Not long before, masterpieces such as Halloween<\/em>, Zombies<\/em>, Alien<\/em>, The Brood, The<\/em> Shining<\/em>, Friday the 13th<\/em> had made their debut on the big screen. It was a time when filmmakers were tackling disturbing and uncomfortable themes, testing and experimenting with new subgenres. Main protagonists were violence, blood, rape, murder. Each film had something original in the story or in the way it was shot. Maniac<\/em> is not a masterpiece, but it is undoubtedly one of the cult films of that time, still a milestone in the horror genre, a source of inspiration for many filmmakers, cited and paid homage to in many films. <\/p>\n

Strongly desired by star Joe Spinell, who also wrote the story and screenplay, the film was directed by William Lustig, who had begun his career as a director, producer, and editor in the world of porn. And Maniac<\/em> was his first “real” film, directed with vividness and skill: a serial killer with an obsession for scalps is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles. Frank. the owner of a mannequin store, but his life changes when young artist Anna asks for his help with her new exhibition. While a beautiful friendship develops between the two, Frank’s obsession begins to grow out of all proportion…. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Interview with Franck Khalfoun<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is your second time working with Alexandre Aja. Did you agree immediately when he asked you to direct the film? <\/strong><\/p>\n

We have a very creative collaboration, and I knew from the beginning that I would have a lot of freedom to do something special. Alex is a wonderful producer, full of ideas and inventiveness. But most of all, as a director, he respects the vision that another director may have and goes out of his way to find the best solutions. Nevertheless, I was very concerned about doing a remake and particularly the remake of a classic of the horror genre. It was definitely a groundbreaking film for the genre, so it was important for me to try to do something equally original and distinctive. I knew I had a strong idea so I wasn’t thinking about how it would compare to the original. <\/p>\n

Did you take part in writing the script? Did you suggest any changes to make it more akin to your style? <\/strong><\/p>\n

The direction of the film was so radical that I had to make some changes to the script and at the same time I tried to keep the story intact. I wanted to pay homage to Joe Spinell’s performance more than anything else. He is what fascinated me most about the original film. Despite all the horrible things the character did, I felt sorry for him and was rooting for him. It was important to feel empathy for the character, especially if you are going to “be” the character. <\/p>\n

Why did you choose to shoot the film entirely in the first person?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wanted to get into the mind of the serial killer as much as possible or at least try to see things from his point of view. As a viewer you want the story to go on, but in the first person you also participate in some way in the killings and there is nothing you can do about it. The overwhelming urge to kill is something that almost all serial killers have claimed to have had, and with this particular way of filming we wanted to share and make that urge more apparent. The most difficult thing with this type of filming is not showing the protagonist. The creation of fear and tension also becomes challenging as you always know where the killer is. I do not think in any case that the audience thinks about this while watching the film. The lighting, set design, direction, and acting share a common goal: to try to immerse the audience within the story so that they experience a new feeling that is difficult to imagine. <\/p>\n

Precisely because of this stylistic choice, how difficult was the editing phase that you yourself oversaw?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The script of Maniac<\/em> is unconventional, as is the filming. And consequently so was the editing. Shooting an entire film in first person means having no coverage. There can be no different takes of the same scene. Therefore, editing became a tool to convey emotions and feelings more than anything else. <\/p>\n

Do you have any funny anecdotes about the set to tell?<\/strong><\/p>\n

One day my sister came to visit the set and left her six-year-old son outside because that was a particularly gory day and all the special make-up effects were obviously not suitable for children. A few minutes later, however, a van full of women without scalps drove toward my nephew, who burst into tears in fear…. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Interview with Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

What was your reaction when Thomas Langmann asked you to “reinvent” the film?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AA:<\/strong> I was a little hesitant at first because the original is a great horror classic. I’ve always been a big fan of Maniac<\/em> and was very excited when Thomas Langmann asked me to do a remake, but I couldn’t imagine doing it without Bill Lustig’s approval and support. Thomas set up the meeting with him in Paris. The funny thing was that Bill had seen my High Tension<\/em> and noticed the quotes and homages to his work and liked it very much. At first he too was a little hesitant about the possibility of doing a remake of his most famous film, however, after a long talk he wanted me to be at the helm of the team and gave us his support. <\/p>\n

GL:<\/strong> I was very skeptical because Maniac<\/em> is a cult-movie<\/em> and I really couldn’t imagine how a worthy remake could be made. Joe Spinell was a big influence in the original film and so it was hard to imagine a new ‘maniac.’ And with Alex we didn’t want to spoil the original. We gave it a lot of thought. And after a while we decided to do it because we found that it might be interesting to see another maniac with a different character than the one played by Joe Spinell. <\/p>\n

Why did you decide to give the direction to Franck Khalfoun and not curate it yourself?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AA:<\/strong> At that time I was developing another film called Cobra, a space adventure film, so I had to juggle several projects at the same time. I still like working as a producer, sometimes it gives me more creative freedom, I like to take risks, without having the responsibility of the director. The original is a great cult film, and it is still one of the most appreciated and beloved horror films. <\/p>\n

How much pressure did you feel during the writing stage?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AA:<\/strong> Not much, because in the end we really honored and paid homage to the original in many ways, the biggest freedom we took was technical and in casting. It came as a shock to fans of Elijah Wood that we cast him as the lead but saw little to no on-screen time. Bill Lustig was not entirely convinced about this choice at first but when he came to the set and met Elijah he was convinced we had made the right choice. <\/p>\n

GL:<\/strong> That is precisely why we took a lot of time before accepting the proposal. The pressure was there because first of all we are talking about a “remake.” Secondly, people still love the original very much, but we had a completely different character in mind in the lead and we knew that in the end it would be very difficult to compare the two. We decided to make the main character less disgusting than the original because Joe Spinell had done it so well and played him so beautifully that it was impossible to recreate that character in the same way, so we decided to go completely in the opposite direction with a new approach. <\/p>\n

As in all previous films, you worked together on the script. How much time did you put into it? And what were the major difficulties? <\/strong><\/p>\n

AA:<\/strong> It took almost three months to write the first draft, but then we rewrote and revised it after many more months. The first big difficulty was to reinvent new murders and create new ways to make a sensation. The other difficulty was the setting, no longer New York City, which was a key element in the original, but over the years the Big Apple has become a less “run-down” city, crime has decreased, so it has lost some of the atmosphere of movies like Taxi Driver<\/em>, Mean Streets<\/em> or Midnight Cowboy<\/em>. So we set the story in the more abandoned and run-down areas of downtown Los Angeles. Another important thing was to try to explain a little bit of Frank Zito’s past history, the difficult childhood and the twisted relationship with his mother, to make sure that we were closer to the killer and build some sort of empathy, but also to try to understand the reason for his terrible actions. <\/p>\n

GL:<\/strong> We finished the first draft very quickly. The structure was very close to that of the original. We worked a lot on the characters and Frank’s relationship with his mother. This element was in my opinion one of the missing points in Lustig’s film: very little information about the character’s life. <\/p>\n

What did you want to keep from the original film and what did you want to change at all costs?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AA:<\/strong> In Lustig’s film, Joe was a kind of foul, fat, dirty, filthy ogre, but very physical and strong. We thought we would veer in the opposite direction, create a different character, a kind of “Norman Bates,” very sleek, thin, with a cold, Nordic beauty, who seems to come from another era. That is why Elijah Wood’s angel face was an almost natural choice. <\/p>\n

GL:<\/strong> The scalping and the dummies were a key point in the original film to understand Frank’s drive for women. And we decided to keep that at all costs. Almost all the murders in the original film are unbelievable, so it was very difficult for us to find others that could compete with those. For example, the shotgun blasting scene is still wonderful, and despite all the tools that exist today and CGI you certainly can’t do better than Tom Savini’s work. So we decided to change it. Same with the subway scene, which we have already mentioned in High Voltage<\/em>. In the end we changed all the murder scenes to try to surprise the audience. <\/p>\n

Why did you choose to shoot everything in subjective?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AA:<\/strong> We wanted to tell the story from the serial killer’s point of view, trying to get inside her twisted mind. In all my previous works I always tried to be on the victim’s side, so that the audience could root for her. Maniac<\/em> is the first film where I took the opposite direction. But I wanted to be on the side of someone who is not hard to empathize with, and so I didn’t want Elijah’s character to be a monstrous villain or the ultimate victim, but something in between. When you think about serial killers who really existed you realize how sometimes they are perfectly normal people, like us, even though we prefer to think of them as monsters and not men, to justify their insanity! It was difficult to shoot a film entirely in the first person, in certain scenes there were four Frank Zito’s on the set: Maxime Alexandre with his camera, Elijah, the stunt double, and the stuntman. But it was an incredibly rewarding experience and very creative, especially for Maxime because he had to make everything as realistic as possible with the camera movements. <\/p>\n

GL:<\/strong> The script was written in first person, but only in the pre-production stage did we decide to shoot entirely in PoV. It was an interesting choice to tell the film through the eyes of a psychopath. There are no other horror films like this. I think this idea completely changes the perception of the villain in the film, and that is also why Elijah Wood agreed to do it. The problem with the PoV idea is the reaction of the audience who think they are going to see a kind of found footage, with shaky images and out-of-focus scenes. Actually Maniac<\/em> is a very clear, stable film, a total immersion into the head of a psychopath. <\/p>\n

In such a film, photography is very important. How do you regard the work of Maxime Alexandre, now your trusted collaborator? <\/strong><\/p>\n

AA:<\/strong> I say this honestly: I could not have made this film without Maxime Alexandre, who has been my director of photography since 2001 as well as a dear friend. In this film he was also willing to work, for obvious reasons, as a cameraman as well. So not only did he have to follow Franck Khalfoun’s directives but also all Elijah’s moves, he had to be almost his shadow. He also came up with some ideas on how to change the look of the film and work with different lenses and lenses, depending on what you go to tell. He was invaluable to the film. <\/p>\n

Although the audience only sees Elijah in mirrors and reflective surfaces, how important was Elijah Wood’s contribution?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AA:<\/strong> Elijah is one of the most talented actors I have ever worked with. He is incredibly careful, methodical, accepts new ideas and improvises a lot on set. He was really great, one of my best on-set experiences with an actor. Elijah had that kind of “plastic” beauty, almost like the mannequins in the film, with a very white complexion and big, deep blue eyes. But at the same time I knew he was capable of looking mean and wild, so I wanted to play on that very contrast. Someone who one moment is shy and charming, the next moment can jump on you, stab you and scalp you. <\/p>\n

The film is very violent and full of blood. The special effects are numerous and incredibly effective and realistic. What were the most difficult to make and shoot? <\/strong><\/p>\n

AA:<\/strong> SPOILER ALERT! The death of Anna’s agent in the penthouse was particularly difficult because she is scalped alive. The actress had to shoot the scene naked, with a prosthesis on her head, and a special effect spraying blood. The scalping was done excellently, with a quick gesture, so Elijah and the actress had to shoot this scene with such realism and force. I still get chills every time I see and see the scene again; it is truly one of the most violent. Another particularly difficult one was Elijah’s last scene: an incredible bloodbath. His victims come back to life for revenge and slaughter him in a really brutal way. That is all I can say right now, but I invite you to watch “Behind the Scenes” to see how difficult and crazy it was to shoot this film! <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Interview with Maxime Alexandre<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is your fifth time working with Alexandre Aja and his crew. How much does it help to work with the same team? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Working with a team that is already broken in is always easier, the rapport you acquire limits that relatively difficult part where you have to in the shortest possible time get into the spirit of a director who for his part started working on the project well before I read the script the first time. Every proposal that the cinematographer comes up with also takes into account in the way it is interpreted depending on the character of the director, and identifying those characters is one of the most delicate steps at the beginning of a project as far as my work is concerned. Of course, we are talking about a real Team here, in the sense that both Franck Khalfoun and Alexandre Aja are now longtime friends. <\/p>\n

Besides writing the script, what was Aja’s input as a producer?<\/strong><\/p>\n

To say that Aja is a producer who leaves all the creativity to his director would be “cheating,” he was hugely present in this film, partly because Lustig’s Maniac<\/em> has always been one of his favorite films, and High Tension<\/em> was a film that already had a lot of Maniac<\/em> in it. I would say that one of Franck Khalfoun’s main challenges was being able to incorporate his ideas by sharing Alex’s interventions. <\/p>\n

After -2 Level of Terror<\/em> you worked once again with Frank Khalfoun. Has anything changed in his way of working after five years? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Frank is a very quirky figure who encapsulates an extraordinary sensitivity, at times his path could be complex to understand, but on Maniac<\/em> he managed to interpret that sensitivity by directing a film that was technically much more complicated than we expected, and he got his team to the end of the film in an astonishing amount of time, and all this with an actor like Elijah Wood and a producer like Aja.<\/p>\n

Why did you state that Maniac<\/em> is the most exciting film you’ve done to date?<\/strong><\/p>\n

To propose to an audience a film shot entirely in subjective perspective, from the point of view of the main character, is a surprising act of courage on the part of a producer, especially in this day and age. So surprising that it took two producers like Thomas Langmann and Alexandre Aja, both fans of the original film, to succeed in bringing this project to life. So, starting from this premise, the film was already getting interesting, then for a cinematographer to make such a film means going completely outside the usual canons. <\/p>\n

When was it difficult to shoot entirely in subjective? <\/strong><\/p>\n

It was extremely complicated, if only because of the fact that a scene shot subjectively does not have the possibility of covering the action with another camera or simply from another angle. By drastically reducing the cuts therefore one finds oneself having to concentrate everything in a single image. <\/p>\n

The most difficult challenge you faced during filming?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The movie itself! Every single scene turned out to be complicated; I have a hard time pinpointing one in particular. I had a fantastic new experience in every way. Taking for example the work done in synergy with Elijah Wood: every shot was prepared and repeated with Elijah, then I would go into action in his place with a shoulder-mounted camera or with a system called BodyMount that allowed us <\/p>\n

of fixing it on my chest so that I could occasionally interact with one arm when space did not allow Elijah to use both hands. The great thing was that Elijah was constantly behind my camera. <\/p>\n

Do you think the public will appreciate this choice?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We were all a bit worried at the beginning, so we chose a gentle way of operating and not as many would have done by adding a dynamism that sometimes leaves the audience annoyed. Franck Khalfoun’s realization, pacing, framing, and cast made this film in my opinion a little gem, which the audience will undoubtedly appreciate. <\/p>\n

Although we only see Elijah Wood in the film in reflections or mirrors, how do you regard his work, having worked side by side throughout the filming?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As I said before working on this film was an experience that few cinematographers and camera operators have had, and without Eiljah Wood none of this would have been possible. Handling the camera from a character’s point of view requires unparalleled collaboration, human character, and patience beyond measure for an actor. Sometimes I felt like a camera when Elijah’s hands were clinging to my bodymount to direct me in one direction or another, sometimes I bumped into him violently, sometimes I was his legs, he was his right arm, and a stand-in was his left arm. The result? Elijah is everywhere in the film, not just in the reflections. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Visually stunning, brutally violent, the remake of Maniac is a psychologically complex and horrific journey into the sick mind of a killer. Interviews with director Franck Khalfoun, screenwriters Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur, and cinematographer Maxime Alexandre <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rs_blank_template":"","rs_page_bg_color":"","slide_template_v7":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[348,347,354],"tags":[349,350,351],"class_list":["post-5088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-specials","tag-cinema","tag-movie","tag-news"],"yoast_head":"\nManiac (2012) - Horror Talks<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Visually incredible, brutally violent, Maniac is a psychologically complex and terrible journey into the sick mind of a killer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.horrortalks.com\/en\/maniac-2012\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Maniac (2012) - 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