The director of this remake of a straight-to-video 1980 slasher film was asked, “Does the world need another serial killer movie? and his answer was, “Obviously, yes!. The actual answer is; no, not really.
The original was a cheap and nasty experience, but now, with better special effects and a more liberal attitude towards screen violence, we should get a better version, right? Well no, actually. It’s a grim, dark experience with loads of gore and not much script, which leaves you feeling exploited and thoroughly used.
Elijah Wood is Frank, a disturbed, lonely young man living in a mannequin shop his dead mother left to him. He restores the models from the 1930s and 1940s, in an obsessive way. His hobby is scalping women, nailing their hair to a mannequin and thus turning them into his girlfriends. We learn, in the usual ho-hum Freudian way, that his mother was an abusive person, and the only time he was allowed to touch her was to brush her hair.
He drives around a Spartan, empty looking LA stalking women and knifing them, all very serial killer-esque. The complication comes when Anna (Nora Arnezeder) visits his store and gets’ his obsession with mannequins. She is a photographer mounting an exhibition, and wants to hire the models for the opening.
He falls for her, claiming she looks at the mannequins with soul’, and that eventually leads to his discovery.
It’s a depressing experience, and not for the obvious reasons. It revels in its violence and appalling treatment of women, yet asks for plenty of sympathy towards Frank. The ending is just daft, and ironically the one character who is almost asking for the haircut treatment Anna’s dreadful boyfriend merely disappears.
The film uses the point-of-view technique, so we see everything as Frank sees it. This has two major flaws there is no tension, because we know where the killer is when chasing the victim, and also we can’t see the actor. That’s a shame as Wood tries to do his best as the killer, shedding his youthful image to play the disturbed young man.
Overall verdict: Unnecessary remake of an 80s exploitation slasher movie that adds little to the genre. Buckets of gore and a sympathetic lead performance do not a decent horror movie make, sadly.
Reviewer: Mike Martin