By day, Frank (Elijah Wood) runs his own business restoring mannequins; by night he murders women, taking their scalps to adorn his personal collection.
When Frank meets photographer Anne, she becomes the latest object of his obsession.
I reviewed the original back in one of the old weekly blogs (there are two old ones, here and here, and the current / permanent one here) and commented that it had a lot of potential, but needed a bit of a tweak on the pacing front.
Sadly, despite a fairly extensive plot overhaul, the movie still feels about half an hour too long.
The original gets accused of misogyny, given that all of Frank's victims are women. Fist of all, I'm not sure Frank is a misogynist as such; He's all kinds of fucked up, but i don't think he actually hates women. Secondly, I don't see that a film about a misogynist is necessarily a misogynistic in itself.
This time around though, I did feel parts were a little borderline... possibly because of the way the movie is filmed; with the exception of a handful of shots (and those are mostly dream sequences) the entire movie is seen, quite literally, through Frank's eyes. Without excessive gore (although there is enough) his first-person perspective made the kills nastier; whether this is to the films credit or detriment, I'll leave you to decide.
There are some nice shots (the original poster is reproduced at one point) and the soundtrack is outstanding - a grimy 70's feel synth score that evokes the feel of the original and it's ilk. That said, little has been done to fix the pacing issues.
Wood's performance is good, but not as good as Spinell's, the non-linear, rambling nature of Frank's monologues has been retained, but are not nearly so disconcerting this time around.
The one area in which it scores over it's predecessor is the ending, which is much clearer this time arround, although functionally the same.
An interesting film, but bot a great one. Probably really only of interest to fans of the 1980 version.
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