Psycho (1998)

Directed by Gus Van Sant. Starring Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche, Juliannae Moore, Viggo Mortensen, William H. Macy, Robert Forster, Philip Baker Hall, Rance Howard. [R]

Van Sant set out to make a shot-for-shot remake of one of Hollywood’s most notorious films, and, well, that’s exactly what he did (when asked why, he said, “So no one else would have to,” but it would have been nice if he then produced the memo dictating such a requirement). A very difficult movie to judge—on the one hand, since it follows the original script and Hitch’s directorial playbook pretty closely, it sometimes still works as an effective suspenser that juicily goes “a little mad sometimes”; on the other hand, what the heck is the point besides a technical exercise homage? May interest those who are curious about its additions and tweaks (colorization, tonal shifts, a little more gore, inserts during the murder scenes, etc.), but it should go without saying that nothing new improves on the original…and did we really need to hear Norman Bates playing with Little Norman during the bathroom voyeur scene? Vaughn replaces Anthony Perkins as Bates, playing the role darker and creepier than Tony did, but it feels like an artificial choice, and makes Norman less interesting and disturbing outside of his original flesh; the other actors mostly play it straight-on, probably grinning behind the scenes at the experience of being in this theater company-style recreation experiment. Minor roles are filled by recognizable names like James Remar, Rita Wilson, James LeGros, and Flea.

33/100