10 Most Anxiety-Inducing Horror Movies EVER

Directed by Franck Khalfoun, Maniac is a remake of William Lustig's infamous 1980 horror of the same name.

Released in 2012, this intense video nasty re-do makes expert use of POV camera to leave the viewer deeply disturbed. The entire film takes place from the perspective of its antagonist, a troubled serial killer whose issues with his overbearing mother have led to an adulthood of scalping women and dressing mannequins in their skin.

So it's not hard to see why this one would be anxiety-inducing.

But what makes the film so much more effective than many entries into the psychological horror sub genre, such as the director's middling earlier effort P2, is this potentially gimmicky but unnervingly effective camera work. Yes, Elijah Wood is superb in the central role, and the one perspective conceit gives the actor nowhere to hide.

But it's the approach itself which makes this a nerve shredding experience. Where slasher films are infamous for dropping viewers into the killer's POV for some sequences, they typically have a final girl for the audience to relate to. Here, seeing the world through this psycho's eyes leaves viewers hoping he'll escape detection and survive thanks to the pesky human instinct for self preservation, which is turned against us expertly.