10 Movies You Should Never Watch Alone

William Lustig's original 1980 Maniac is quite the unsettling experience on its own, easily one of the grimmest, sleaziest entries in the first wave of the slasher movie. However, Franck Khalfoun's 2012 version proved to be one of the few recent horror remakes to genuinely improve on the source material, largely because it's even more disturbing.

Elijah Wood seems unlikely casting as Frank Zito, a professional mannequin restorer with a homicidal fixation on beautiful women. Still, while he may not be as physically imposing as his predecessor in the role, Joe Spinnell, Wood is more than successful in conveying an unhinged mind rapidly losing its thin grip on reality.

However, while not to slight the actor's efforts, Maniac's real masterstroke was director Khalfoun's decision to shoot almost the entire film from Wood's point of view. Again, this might initially seem a bit misguided and gimmicky, and too reminiscent of the found footage approach which has been so overused in horror in recent years; yet it really works here, putting the viewer directly into the killer's shoes and showing the terror of his victims up close.

Some might complain that this POV approach only serves to ensure the viewer identifies with the killer, in line with what many critics have often claimed of the slasher genre. On the contrary, Maniac only serves to disturb the viewer further by suggesting culpability in such hideous crimes. The end result can severely mess with your head.