Maniac is a 2012 psychological slasher film directed by Franck Khalfoun, written by Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur,[4][5] and starring Elijah Wood and Nora Arnezeder.

Usually an actor's baggage can hurt your character, but he really is just this good guy sort of persona so I couldn't wait to turn him into a horrible beast.

[8] Khalfoun said in another interview: "POV (Point of View) has been in movies since Peeping Tom, but no horror film had ever been entirely shot that way...

The cinema plays a big part in that concept since you are stuck in your seat forced to experience the events with little control over the outcome.

Maxime was effectively the character as well as me, and the rest of Frank had to be created locally through his inner monologue, which I recorded on an audio stage afterwards... We approached the point-of-view thing with a certain naivety.

You see Frank throughout the movie sporadically and Elijah was there to make sure the camera moved the right way and the lines were delivered correctly.

The Hollywood Reporter declared: "The nerve-shredding score, by the mono-monikered Rob, salutes the music Italian prog-rockers Goblin provided for [Dario] Argento's early horror-thrillers, the 1980s electronica lending a deeply melancholic city-at-night vibe".

[25] Maniac had its USA premiere at the Mad Monster Party horror convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, on March 23, 2013.

[28] Front Row Reviews called it "one of the strongest and most beautiful classic horror stories of our generation... visually and audibly stunning".

[27] The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Wood's "forever-young face, often an asset in projecting innocence, is here a sign of a man-child emotionally interrupted, as he stalks down women and removes their scalps in a rampage that begins shortly after the death of his mother".

The twist, and what helps elevate the nasty, no-holds-barred Maniac from the grindhouse to an out-of-competition midnight-screening slot in Cannes, is that the entire movie is shot from the killer's POV – we only glimpse Wood in reflection and in photographs.

It's a daring decision, potentially stripping the film of the suspense of not knowing where the killer is and obliquely inviting the audience to have empathy with him.

For the most part, Khalfoun and cinematographer Maxime Alexandre pull it off, although the technique more than once tips over from inventively arty to film-school-grad pretentious.

Slasher-movie fans, however, need not be put off by the stylized camera work and arty patina: this is down and dirty genre filmmaking, and the various slaughters, excruciatingly detailed scalpings and other atrocities are no less gruesome because of the highfalutin approach...

[15] A reviewer for SciFiNow praised the film's "fresh and challenging approach" and said "Khalfoun's version is arguably a more troubling piece of work than its predecessor.

This unsavoury but powerful trick is contrasted by the decision to switch out the grimy night-time world of Eighties New York for the neon landscape of Los Angeles, complete with a superb synth-heavy soundtrack that makes the film feel more like Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive than anything from the gloomy Platinum Dunes remake stable or the winking throwbacks of the Grindhouse movies".

[29] Daniel Krupa reviewed the film for the IGN website, calling it "violent, gruesome, shocking, and extremely cruel" but "also entertaining, darkly amusing, smart, and impeccably well-made".

[30] A review on the Geeks of Doom website said "Elijah Wood provides a chilling, downright eerie performance as Frank – even though he's seldom on-screen.

Overall, Maniac is a well-made, artistic take on Lustig's guerrilla-gore flick that manages to give the viewer the requisite blood and brutality while adding some much-needed psychological underpinning to the characters and their motivations.

[17] The ScreenRant.com review called the film a "solid revival of a genre that's gone rather stale in the last decade" and said: "With its throwback synthesizer score, sustained point-of-view shots, and shadowy lighting, the preview certainly evokes a sense of gut-churning dread".

With a voice that mixes breathy, genuinely unsettling obsession with a childlike honesty, Wood's interpretation of Frank looks to be a new creature entirely".

[25] New Empress Magazine criticized the film: "The digital cinematography by Maxime Alexandre uses an annoyingly stylized gloss over a lot of the potential scuzziness, leaving run-down downtown Los Angeles as industrial and neglected, but not forbidding, creating an atmosphere reminiscent of a video game.

[31] Khalfoun said that audience members have vomited and fainted, and he took the reactions "as a compliment", explaining: "We had a screening here in Los Angeles and somebody passed out, which I pat myself on the back for.

The audience gets to experience for the first time how sick [it is to commit murder] – we're certainly not condoning it, but making a real statement about serial killers".

[8] The CD soundtrack composed by Robin Coudert (aka Rob) is available on Music Box Records label website.