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Although I turned ten the year the remake came out, I can safely say without any facts backing me up that the largest question was how the acting was going to hold up, especially Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates. Anthony Perkins’s Norman Bates is a singularly iconic (to be redundant) performance and one that would be impossible to emulate. Vaughn does a decent job taking the performance in his own direction a little bit but he’s no replacement. It is fun to see him in retrospect, though, because he’s rarely in anything that’s not godawful anymore. My favorite, William H. Macy, as the private investigator Arbogast, seems to embody the 1960 mentality the most; Moore and Mortensen suffice as well. Anne Heche, however, sadly sleepwalks through her performance. Since she anchors the first half of the film, one would think she should have had a strong performance, whether it be a faithful performance or not. Van Sant gave his actors leeway on how his actors were to act, but he really should have exercised his directorial power in this case. Then again, having seen Last Days and Michael Pitt’s performance in it, I suppose I can say that Van Sant isn’t exactly an actor’s director.

So what’s the deal? I’ve basically spouted only negative things about Psycho. For someone who, somehow, had never seen nor heard of the Hitchcock version, they would find this film not very good and probably forget about it instantly. For everyone else, though, it could be considered a success. At the very least, for me, it reminded me of everything I loved about the original but with actors I recognized. It also is a benchmark (if I am indeed using that word correctly) that shows how far filmmaking has come in 38 years. Like Van Sant said, a movie can’t truly be remade (although he said that after the negative reviews, so who knows if he was just trying to cover his ass. He should have tried to cover his ass after Last Days too. Oh man, do I hate Last Days). The Psycho remake could have been redone differently, with Marion somehow surviving or Norman being more physically crazy or something (as it would most likely be done), but this experiment wasn’t. The music that worked so well in 1960 falls apart in 1998. Fashions and women’s roles have changed in 38 years as well as audience’s expectations. From my copious film history classes, I know how the timeline has moved from period to period and why we’re where we are now. It takes something like this, though, to really show how cinema changes. I’ve seen neither of Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much-s, but I’m sure the same thing is evident from that.

The 1998 Psycho is a representation of change in cinema, and really, I can’t think of very many other movies that can say that. Well, I can’t think of any other bad movies that can say that.

I’m proud to appreciate (not love) Psycho (1998).

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