Somewhere deep within noble, valiant, hairy-footed Frodo Baggins, or rather the actor who portrays him, lies the soul of a serial killer. When he’s not bearing rings or slaying Orcs in Peter Jackson’s adaptations of J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” or “The Hobbit,” Elijah Wood has taken on such villainous roles as Kevin, the ghoulish nerd who enjoys eating people in Robert Rodriguez’s “Sin City” (2005), or Frank Zito, the creep who kills women and attaches their scalps to mannequins in Franck Khalfoun’s remake of William Lustig’s notorious 1980 slasher flick, “Maniac.”
No doubt Wood is attracted to these films not because he’s a part-time psychopath, but because they have ambitions beyond being merely exploitative. Full story for BostonGlobe.com subscribers.



