Director: Franck Khalfoun
Year: 2012
Country: France/USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Living in New York City, a man working as a mannequin-restorer at a family-owned shop tries to keep his murderous tendencies in check around a beautiful artist who wants to explore his work further only for the murderous urges to creep back in and endanger everyone around him.
Review:
This was an enjoyable enough if slightly flawed remake. One of the more enjoyable aspects of this one is the one aspect carried over from the original in that the brutality is top-notch here. Given all the focus on scalping and the brutality involved there that details the various kills featured, there's a much sharper and more graphic focus on those methods than expected which generate some rather gruesome kills. The multitude of scalping done here are convincing, excruciating to watch and pulled off rather well with the knife entering the body and the sight of the flesh ripping and tearing as they're removed including some while they're still alive which helps to make for quite an impressive and bloody sight. As well, this one also generates plenty of graphic and gory sequences here where it showcases both the brutality dashed out in his crimes as well as the stellar flesh-ripping fun to be had in the finale which has plenty of rather bloody imagery.
As well, this one manages to really get a lot to like out of the portrayal of the main psycho as the manner of him being a disturbed and clearly unhinged individual from the start has given this a frightening persona. Fighting off the craziness that's slowly creeping in allows for a rather obvious sense of suspense in when he's going to snap causes this to be quite enjoyable in the detailing of his life with every part of it documented here. That is mainly due to Elijah Wood's acting, which is quite impressive here. Owning the role of a mentally unbalanced individual with deep insecurities much better than the original, he does seem charming enough to draw others into the trap in order to kill them while just being utterly dark and creepy so that he can really be believable in the killer role. It's one of his finer performances in the genre and really makes for a special time here as these issues hold this up over it's few minor if largely-detrimental issues.
The main problem affecting this one is that, despite all this great work here promoting the idea of his insanity, the film really doesn't have much interesting going on for a large majority of the time. The fact that spending the entire time in his personal viewpoint, even spending the time to see his reflection in mirrors or windows or even shiny surfaces gives this nothing all that interesting to watch play out, even going so far as to be outright boring as the idea of watching him cry in front of mannequins or complain about his mother's history of abuse problems and taking it out on women. These don't make him any more creepy than a regular psychopath, and the scenes featuring this are rather irritating to get through. That manages to give the film a lot of scenes where he comes off like a simpering loser rather than a brutal take-charge maniac out taking women's scalps and really loses a lot of the appeal and danger of the situation. Likewise, the ending is just a chaotic and wholly bland mess that just doesn't offer much clarity at all as to what's going on and just doesn't make any sense at all beyond bringing up more gore and action. Otherwise, there's not much else to this one.
Overview: ** 1/2/5
Although it has some rather detrimental flaws that really hold this one back, those are somewhat entertaining to those who might appreciate that kind of effort. This one is really only for those curious about this one based on the original or fans of the creative aspects, while those not appealed by those aspects should heed caution.
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