Ya' know?? For a while there, I was worried...worried that this new incarnation of the uncompromisingly violent, brutal, perverse and grimy 1980 splatter horror classic, "Maniac", would suffer in much the same way as other attempts at making...or rather, remaking some of the more prominent and controversial '80's horror flicks (...like "Friday the 13th" and "Last House on the Left", for instance), in that the film would be newly rendered in what this viewer has previously & often termed as having a 'rustic slickness', which often tends to temper the overall tone of raw and visceral horror, notable in classics past. Well, I'm quite elated to say that this is not wholly the case, as the 2013 film, "Maniac" definitely exhues a most familiar, albeit slightly toned down and polished sense of dark, inner-city, back-alley filth and seediness...one of the aspects, which made the original film very uncomfortably irresistible to watch...though indeed, this new 'Maniac' definitely reflects a sense of higher production value, as compared to it's inspiration. That been said, the film...despite how respectably accomplished it looks, and how effectively the film unnerves and unsettles...DOES somewhat fail in ways that seem inevitable and unavoidable...in ways, which made the original film so alluringly embraceable...