Psycho (1998)

The amount of times I've tried to watch this and been unable to get through it is amazing.

Director: Gus Van Sant
Writers: Joseph Stefano (Screenplay)
               Robert Bloch (Novel)
Runtime: 1hr 45 minutes

Plot: A young woman steals from her boss and ends up at a hotel, meeting the strange Norman Bates, a man who runs the hotel with a strange love for both stuffed birds and his mother.

This is something that did not have to happen, and I mean that with every fibre of my soul. The original was about as close to perfect as you can get a film to be. I'm not 100% sure as to why this was remade, maybe it was to see how audiences would react to the exact same film, but in colour and with (obviously) younger actors. For the most part, the reaction was what you'd think it'd be; "Don't touch that classic" However, while reading what people thought about it on Rotten Tomatoes it seems like a lot more people enjoyed it, including the fact that Vince Vaughn was a good replacement for Anthony Perkins as the deranged Norman Bates. I will strongly object to that til the day I die.

Time for the good because I have to start this off nicely and the good thing about this is the idea of doing the shot-for-shot remake of a classic like this. It's a pretty good idea...in a sense. The idea of taking something that already exists, and making it all over again for a new generation, but the exact same thing. I love the concept of seeing how audiences would react if this was put out in the modern day. I love the unoriginality of it, I see what the people involved were trying to do, but this just felt like the kid at school who asks to copy your homework but doesn't try hard enough to change it to be their own thing. I'm always down for unoriginality if something new can come from it, that's a weird thing to say but I hope I got it across clearly.

Now for the bad, Vaughn as Norman Bates is creepy in all the wrong ways. You'd think having a creepy Norman Bates would be great, genius even but you see the thing is, Anthony Perkins was creepy but in that "I have no social boundaries because I wasn't allowed out of the house as a kid but I'm working on it" kind of way whereas Vaughn just...kinda...gives off that "I'm going to either molest, rape or murder you, or all of the above, you have no choice." And that's not something you want for a suspenseful thriller with a twist, you want someone who's strange but not blatantly a serial killer, you want to be able to kinda guess there's something off about him not think he's an escaped convict or something. Fuck. Can we just agree to never put Vaughn in a serious film again? Leave him to his below average comedies, he does well enough in those.

Looking through my notes, I noticed one good thing about Vaughn's performance. When he bursts in toward the end with that dress on and the knife, man...fucked if that's not one of the funniest scenes in all of history. He looks way too pleased to be in that dress, not deranged, more like he'd found his calling as a cross-dresser rather than an actor. Not that you can't be a cross-dresser and an entertainer but y'know.

Back to the bad, this film was made in colour and while I understand why, y'know, modifying it for a modern audience, it doesn't seem to carry the same impact. We know what colour blood is, yet it seems so much scarier in black and white, I don't know exactly what it is but it just brings some sort of tension that colour blood doesn't bring.

I think that's about it, it's taken me about 16 or so hours to write this because today has been disgustingly hot and it got cool around 11 at night and I'm just flat out exhausted. I hope this film isn't someone's first introduction to the Hitchcock thriller because....obvious reasons, this film doesn't work as it's own thing. I'd advise this be watched after watching the original to compare and see which you like better. That's it for today, peace out guys.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this short. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this short then please go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.