Psycho (1998) review.
Deep breath…
Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.
Psycho (1998)
Directed by Gus Van Sant
Written by Joseph Stefano
Starring Anne Heche, Vince Vaughn, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, Viggo Mortenson, Robert Forster and Rita Wilson
Psycho (1998) Review
This is going to be an unapologetically negative review. In all my years watching movies I’ve seen plenty of bad ones. All forms of bad movies. Poorly shot, poorly acted, poorly scripted…there are a lot of ways a movie can go off the rails. I’ve never seen anything fail quite like the Gus Van Sant’s remake of Psycho. It would be bad enough if someone took Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece and colorized it for TV. That’s something that Ted Turner famously liked to do from time to time…annoying and unnecessary…but so are commercial breaks and the formatting of video on old school television. Even with those changes…watching it would still retain what it is at its heart. Gus Van Sant ripped that heart out in 1998. We are no closer to understanding why.
Let’s back up. Robert Bloch’s original novel that Alfred Hitchcock adapted in 1960 has its own share of issues. For starters, it presents a completely unlikable version of Norman Bates. Consider how Hitchcock’s version forces you to Norman’s side after the shocking death of the main character. Bloch’s novel leaves you shocked at the murder…and untethered to Norman. It even introduces you to Norman at the start of the novel…destroying the illusion that Marion (Mary in the novel) is our full-time protagonist. Hitchcock leaves us with the odd but likable motel manager. Bloch leaves us blowing in the wind.
It’s one of Hitchcock’s greatest tricks. We spend much of the second half of Psycho worried that Norman will be discovered. The dutiful son. It’s an incredibly forward-thinking twist for 1960. Especially when the novel didn’t pull it off first. The difficulty knowing how you should feel about Norman is what makes Psycho work after its most famous scene. We aren’t rooting for Arbogast to uncover his mother’s crime. Hitchcock presents us with two sides of the same coin in Marion and Norman. Likable people trapped by circumstance. Marion doesn’t make it out of her trap. We are left rooting for Norman to make it out of his.
Van Sant misses all of this. He presents a Norman that is instantly recognizable as a psychopath. All of Anthony Perkins’ charm is absent in Vince Vaughn’s wild eyes. It’s a casting issue. Vaughn has had many fine turns in his career…he even pulls of psycho killer in Freaky. The role of Norman Bates is not in his wheelhouse. There is never a moment where you are on his side. You aren’t rooting for him. In that way it is more like Bloch’s novel…even if they achieve it in a different way. Psycho (1998) isn’t billed as a reimagining of Bloch’s work. It’s sold as a remake of Hitchcock’s. It doesn’t even understand Hitchcock’s movie.
To address the elephant in the room…Van Sant’s movie is not a shot for shot remake of the original film. It adds in absurd moments but for the most part serves as a reproduction of Joseph Stefano’s original screenplay. There isn’t one added moment that helps the movie. Like the choice to present it near shot for shot in the first place…the inclusions make no sense. Some are to modernize the story (Moore saying she has to get her Walkman is as ridiculous as it is hilarious). Others are supposed to show us inside Norman’s mind. Storm clouds and…a goat in the road? If there’s one thing you can learn from Van Sant’s version…he is the last person who should be explaining what is in Norman’s head.
Psycho (1998) feels more like it is refilmed from memory than blocked out shot for shot. 25 years later it comes across as something we might see AI create in the future. Feed the screenplay and a copy of the original film into a computer and this is what would come out. The beats are the same, presented in order…and it doesn’t have a heart.
What it does have is a surprisingly credible cast. Vaughn’s miscasting aside, Van Sant gathers a who’s who of the top independent movie talent of the time. Anne Heche plays the doomed Marion. She’s perfectly fine. Julianne Moore is her sister Lila….and is fine as well. William H. Macy plays Detective Arbogast…again, fine. Viggo Mortensen probably improves on the Sam Loomis character by providing him with some charisma…even if he’s mumbling through some scenes. They aren’t all on the same page. Vaughn isn’t even in the same book.
The biggest problem that Psycho (1998) is that it never justifies its existence. As strange as the choice to remake it was in the first place…doing so did open the door to some interesting possibilities. Van Sant isn’t interested in any of them. The movie doesn’t comment on the original. It doesn’t have anything to say about the state of the genre in 1998. It isn’t that interested in exploring technological changes since 1960. Outside of the opening shot managing to track all the way into the hotel room…it’s mostly the same techniques attempting to be executed similarly to the original.
This all leads to the sensation that what you are watching is wrong. This wants to be Hitchcock’s movie. As a result, every line delivered differently, every slightly different frame…it feels off. When you set out to duplicate something perfect…all that will stand out is the imperfections. That can not have been the purpose of the exercise…but it is the only result you can take from it. A movie that purposely does nothing original and has nothing to say about the material. A truly, fully unnecessary movie. Perhaps the most unnecessary one ever made.
Which leads us to the score. I’m not referring to Bernard Herrmann’s excellent Psycho score…reused here because of course it is. I’m talking about the review score. The lowest we’ve ever handed out is a 1/5. A single star to acknowledge that you did, in fact, technically make a movie. Gus Van Sant may not have even done that. But I don’t think a zero is in order either. Everyone should watch it. Once. See it for all the wrong reasons…but see it, nonetheless. You’re unlikely to ever see anything like it again. God willing.
Scare Value
Time hasn’t changed anything. Van Sant’s Psycho remake remains as perplexing and exercise as ever. An unbelievably good cast seems confused as to what the direction of the movie is. Simply put…there doesn’t seem to be a point to any of this. It doesn’t comment on the original, the passage of time, the movies it inspired…anything. Whatever the reason is that we have this…we didn’t need it.
.5/5
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