Elijah Wood has played a wide array of characters ranging from penguins and hobbits to Ad-Rock and a man who speaks to a pot-smoking dog. But none of them can even compare to the character he will play in Franck Khalfoun‘s Maniac. Wood will play as Frank, a man bent on gruesomely murdering random women by scalping them, and using their scalps as a part of the mannequins he creates. He does all of this to cope with the loss of his mother, who had abused him as a child.

Beware, the trailer is not for the faint of heart, it’s full of brutal violence, nudity, and rape, so take not it’s NSFW. But take a look at the trailer here below if you are interested in the film.

Maniac is based on William Lustig‘s film of the same name, which was released back in 1980, and features the same story. But Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur, and C.A. Rosenberg penned the script for a contemporary feel that’s in the spirit of Lustig’s Maniac. It’s like Wood has taken his Kevin character in Sin City and turned it upside down and spun it around.

The film is currently selling in Cannes, so the trailer you are watching now is more of a sales pitch than a trailer. With no distributor, Maniac has no release date. Let’s hope someone finds the value in the film so we can get to see it.

Trailer

[Source: Cannes via First Showing]