Maniacal Lunacy

By now most of you will have heard that the 2013 remake of MANIAC starring Elijah Woods has been banned in New Zealand. The classification board deemed the film's point of view from the killer's perspective to be too dangerous and influential on a viewing audience. Is this an insult, or what!? I held back from commenting on the story until more information came to light, but it's a clear case (again) of a select handful of old fashioned fuddy-duddies determining what the rest of us can or cannot view. The horror community is one of the most intelligent and informed of all the fan-bases and prior to this banning, they would have been practically the only people flocking to this film. It's a niche audience. Now this stupid ban has encouraged and facilitated an influx of illegal piracy where the people they are "protecting" will go to illegal measures to see the material anyway... and to use the film's POV as a reason to deny it a release is hypocritical to the abundance of first-player video games, which hit the market every month. These games demand actual participation from the player to perpetrate the violence, whereas a film like Maniac only requires a subdued audience. Those of us who have already seen the film did not walk out of the cinema in search of a kill.... most of us looked for the nearest Yum-Cha restaurant before heading home to bed.

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Click image to visit Monster Pictures' article on the recent banning.