Maniac is being compared to films like Melancholia and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I was reminded of Girl, Interrupted especially during Maniac’s final scene. Watching Annie break Owen out of a psychiatric ward, the two of them peeling away in an old truck, reminded me of the scenes where Lisa, Susanna, and the other girls gleefully sneak out of their hospital rooms at night. Those analogies don’t really nail it, though. Melancholia frames depression as aimless antipathy set against the looming apocalypse. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is more about lobotomizing painful memories, then accepting that life contains a full spectrum of emotions. Girl, Interrupted, meanwhile, is a memoir of treatment from another era, when women who were different were “troubled” and institutionalized.