Psycho (1998)

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Crappy film

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

This is one of the strangest and most unnecessary experiments I've ever come across, and it serves as unintentional proof of why some films simply MUST be shot in black-and-white to work.

It was quite something of a bitter pill to swallow and having to sit through this frame-by-frame remake of the 1960 classic horror movie.What were they thinking they decided to do this project?It was so hard to take it serious by any account. And the cast had no chance in even matching those in the original movie. Sure, they did a good enough job, but it was just an atrocity towards the original movie. I will say that Anne Heche, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen and William H. Macy were doing great jobs, despite being challenged with an abominable project. It was somewhat more of a strained effort to watch Vince Vaugh trying to waltz through the performance of Normal Bates.This 1998 remake might actually pass as an adequate watch for those not familiar with the original movie. But if you have seen the original movie and if you liked the original movie, then do yourself a favor and stay well clear of this one.I've seen it once before, although I don't recall when or recall how I thought about the movie back then. But I decided to revisit this remake recently, and found it a struggle without end to endure and sit through it. I was cringing so often and it was toe-curling to witness director Gus Van Sant do absolutely no justice to the original "Psycho" movie.

Why did this movie need to be remade? I am not going to add anything to the comments already posted on IMDb, but this film infuriated me to such an extent that I can't keep myself from adding to the pile of negative reviews on here. I am a big fan of Hitchcock's original "Psycho", have seen it several times already and consider it as part of my top five favorite movies of all time. Anthony Perkins' acting was phenomenal in the original version. I even love "Bates Motel", the TV series adapted from Hitchcock's classic starring Freddie Highmore and Vera Farmiga, and Robert Bloch's source material. Not everything about the TV show may be perfect, but all of them, the film, the series, the book managed to captivate me to a certain extent, so much that the story of Norman Bates, whether he is portrayed by Anthony Perkins or Freddie Highmore, has not been able to let me go ever since I first watched Hitchcock's "Psycho".This remake directed by Gus Van Sant, the director who also brought us some great movies such as "Good Will Hunting", "Milk", "To Die For" or "Finding Forrester", butchers the original story even though each shot, each movement, each line, each part of the soundtrack is almost exactly the same. Regarding it through the technical perspective, this movie remains faithful to the original version, yet it lacks so much more. The coloring feels out-of-place and distracting, especially if you consider how perfectly the black-and-white coloring worked in the original. And the acting should not even be talked about; it's that bad.I watched the remake mainly because Viggo Mortensen, Julianne Moore and William H. Macy star in it, all of whom are actors I respect highly and enjoy to watch on my screen. They made me think, how bad could this movie be? Critics were not as harsh with this movie as I imagined, so I decided to give it a chance and build my own opinion. In fact, neither Mortensen and Moore nor Macy were terrible at all; they all did a decent job at portraying their characters (even though it felt at some times like Julianne Moore was overacting a bit), but those are more or less the only positive things which can be said about the film. The main reason for why this movie failed may well be the horrendous acting skills of Anne Heche and Vince Vaughn. Whereas Perkins (and Highmore in the 2013 TV series) both succeed in portraying Norman's nervousness to perfection and presenting Norman as a multi-layered character, Vince Vaughn just ... just fails utterly. Not a single line which comes out of his mouth feels credible throughout the course of the movie, and perhaps even more importantly, you never catch yourself thinking, "how can this man do such horrible things?", as I (and probably everyone else) did upon watching the original movie. Vaughn plays Norman Bates like someone would play him in a parody, painting a stereotypical serial killer without the characteristic elements which made Anthony Perkins' version of Norman Bates such an extraordinary performance.In addition, to put it mildly, Anne Heche cannot act. In the 1960 film, the shower scene shocked me, it made me feel disgusted and overwhelmed and intrigued by Hitchcock's directing skills at the same time. In this film, the only thing I felt was relief that it was Anne Heche's final moment in the movie, as horrible as that sounds. It's a shame that the people responsible in Hollywood for all the remakes of beloved classics seem to think that young people nowadays don't watch those old movies anymore, and thus decide to remake them to make them more accessible. In most cases, those remakes simply do not work (there are exceptions, of course, but they are rare treasures among all the nonsense), and "Psycho" may be the prime example for this. You would be better off watching the original, reading Robert Bloch's novel or, if you want to see a more modern, a more timely adaptation of the story, then you should turn on "Bates Motel". The 1998 version of the story should simply be avoided like the plague.

19 years after the original shock of seeing one of the great Hitchcock classics massacred by one of the greatest living directors, I sat to watch it again. Surprise, surprise. Gus Van Sant's daring attempt could have been another masterpiece if the casting of Norman Bates, in particular, had been more visionary and less opportunistic. Imagine what a break for an actor to re-invent that iconic character. Imagine what Heath Ledger, Billy Crudup, Ryan Gosling or Guy Pearce could have done with it. I'm sure that if you had been riveted rather than embarrassed by that characterization, if Vince Vaughn was more of a serious actor who understood the responsibility of his endeavor Van Sant's Psycho would have been a triumph.