Maniac Censored in Japan to Attract Teen Audience?

Steve Barton   |  

Jun 6, 2013

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Well now. This is odd. According to a recent blog in Japan, Franck Khalfoun’s masterful reboot of Maniac (review) has itself been butchered to cater to the country’s teenaged audience. Read on for details.

Curse.jp reports, “EIRIN (akin to America’s MPAA) and Comstock Group, Japanese distributor of Maniac, censored several gore scenes to make it 15+ rating – so that high school students could see it. It would be like making an R-rated or NC-17-rated film in the US a PG-13 film. Some scenes were blurred out, some were darkened. I can’t provide you the evidence of these details because it’s still playing in theatres – and to give you proof, I would have to record it at the theatre. Which is illegal. But please believe me when I say it is true.”

Um… God bless the U.S.A.?

Look for Maniac to open in select theaters, on iTunes, and on VOD platforms June 21st.

Synopsis:
Just when the streets seemed safe, a serial killer with a fetish for scalps is back and on the hunt. Frank (Elijah Wood) is the withdrawn owner of a mannequin store, but his life changes when young artist Anna (Nora Arnezeder) appears asking for his help with her new exhibition. As their friendship develops and Frank’s obsession escalates, it becomes clear that she has unleashed a long-repressed compulsion to stalk and kill. A 21st century Jack the Ripper set in present day L.A., Franck Khalfoun’s Maniac, produced by Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes, Haute Tension) and composed by Rob of the band Phoenix, is a re-boot of the William Lustig cult film considered by many to be the most suspenseful slasher movie ever made – an intimate, visually daring, psychologically complex and profoundly horrific trip into the downward spiraling nightmare of a killer and his victims.

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