Critical reaction
Maniac has a 53% approval rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 74 reviews and an average score of 5.08/10. The consensus says: "Shocking and bloody, Maniac is smarter than your average psychological slasher, but it's often undermined by its excessive gore".
Front Row Reviews called it "one of the strongest and most beautiful classic horror stories of our generation... visually and audibly stunning".
Complex magazine wrote that "having seen it, we can confirm that Maniac is an early frontrunner for 2013's best horror movie". 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".
Megan Lehmann, who watched the film at the Cannes Film Festival for The Hollywood Reporter, wrote in her review: "Wood's limpid saucer eyes are used here to telegraph unhinged blood-lust and insanity, even if only sporadically, as he plays a sicko with mommy issues who scalps his female victims. 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... The movie is essentially a sadistic art-house bloodbath, with opera music and ballet dancers and funky little art galleries".
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. By forcing us to see through the eyes of a man who brutally murders women, the issues of voyeurism and misogyny rear their ugly heads before you've even settled in... Maniac is certainly brutal and gory, but it's the manner in which the violence is presented that really turns the stomach. 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".
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". The first-person point of view filming, he said, is not "an idle stylistic flourish, though, since it has a serious impact on how the audience experiences the movie... It's uncomfortable and queasy stuff, but it occasionally achieves a kind of weird beauty". 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. Wood communicates Frank's mental illness by muttering to himself and carrying on conversations with his mannequins – grunting like a rabid animal as he stalks his prey – while Arnezeder makes for a compelling, sympathetic 'final girl' who challenges Wood's maniac in unconventional ways. 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. There's a lot to appreciate in Khalfoun's film – a stylish, modern-day slasher that is deeply disturbing and compelling".
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". Wood's acting was praised: "Though this isn't the first time Wood has played a serial killer, the trailer makes it clear that this isn't simply a rehash of his wordless, goggle-eyed performance as Kevin in Sin City. 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".
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. The aesthetic choices also make the murders seem unreal and even pixelated, with a blotchy and heightened crimson colour accompanying every scalping. Such a pity then, that the opportunity for a truly horrifying cinematic experience has been botched through odd directional choices by Franck Khalfoun and photography that creates style over substance, reducing the impact of a serial killer with so much potential to horrify and disturb us".
