‘The Park Maniac’ is a Falsely Moral True Crime Adaptation
The Park Maniac (O Maniáco do Parque) explores the life and crimes of Francisco de Assis Pereira, a real-life Brazilian serial killer arrested in 1998 for killing 11 women. The film adaptation, directed by Mauricio Eça, follows Francisco (Silvero Pereira) through Brazil as journalist Elena (Giovanna Grigio) pursues him, who seeks to expose him for his crimes. The Park Maniac aims to highlight the struggles of women via its protagonist. Yet, the film falters due to its focus on sensationalism.
Francisco is a delivery driver and hobby roller skater in São Paulo. A loner, he spends his nights killing and days motorcycling through the city. Meanwhile, Elena is a journalist struggling to get a story that pleases her editors. When she stumbles upon a tip about a death in a São Paulo park – one of Francisco’s victims – she takes it and begins tracking down the suspect.
The two concurrent storylines are vastly different in tone. Elena's perspective is that of an impassioned journalist, and Francisco's is of a leering psychopath with violent tendencies. Elena served as the seeker of justice for Francisco's crimes (according to an interview with actor Silvero Pereira). However, her primary function allows for creative liberties in framing Francisco's story.
After meandering throughout the city early in The Park Maniac, Francisco lures a woman to the park by posing as a cosmetic modeling photographer, then strangles her with a shoelace after sexually assaulting her. The scene is the one extended view the film provides of his killings and holds back from gratuity. Seeing one killing is enough to provide maximum impact. The camera thoroughly visualizes the women's experience of terror. But more than their terror, the enigma of Francisco looms over all.
This enigma is what Elena is desperate to uncover. A young journalist grieving her writer father, she takes on the story after technically stealing a tip from a senior editor's source. Elena is the one who dubs Francisco "The Park Maniac" and pleases her editors after bringing success to the paper with her bloody story. She feels no joy, however, and is earnest in her mission to find the perpetrator of the crimes. Many journalist cliches are employed to show her obsession: montages of typing, rewinding tapes, furrowed brows, and late-night coffees. She sets up camp in her father's empty apartment and creates an evidence board on the wall that is obsessively pored over.
Elena is constantly battling against her editors' interests as a woman in a male-dominated workplace. The film is unsubtle in displaying her superiors' prejudice. When a senior editor publishes a follow-up story on 'The Park Maniac,' his insensitive headline reads "Excitaram O Maníaco E Terminaram Na Vala" – "They Aroused The Maniac And Ended Up Dead." The film denounces the sensationalist media coverage of Francisco but fails to acknowledge how Elena herself is part of that in coining the moniker "The Park Maniac." Something one could expect. However, the film itself indulges in sensationalism to excite its audience. Thrilling music accompanies every scene of Francisco, whether he's skating through the city or stalking through the streets, maliciously smirking as he evades capture and is constantly leering with his head slightly down, eyes hooded. He is a textbook psychopath and positioned as someone the audience can easily vilify – at the same time, The Park Maniac leans into the desire to explore his interiority. Francisco's perspective is equal to Elena's, with both of them as main characters, and the film even attempts to humanize him at one point through a moment he experiences with his boss.
But there is no exploration into what makes Francisco a killer or who he is. The Park Maniac satisfies itself by positioning him as a villain and shifts its message to his victims – but the women themselves are ultimately not the subject either. There are fleeting moments where Elena bonds with the victims when speaking to them when they tearily express their plight to her recording device, and then they simply disappear offscreen. It is through Elena that they receive an imagined form of justice, as she is merely a vehicle for the collective suffering of Brazilian women. And while Elena is the central focus of The Park Maniac, her character rings hollow despite Grigio's best efforts at breathing life into her.
The cat-and-mouse game Elena and Francisco play climaxes when the two finally meet, and The Park Manic lays out its message in preachy manner. Its final moments are saccharine and self congratulatory, cementing the entire film as merely a means to an end. In offering audiences, a look inside the life of a killer while balancing it out with a perspective they can feelgood about, The Park Maniac feigns a moral stance but offers no salient criticism of the voyeuristic true-crime genre.
