This film is both overambitious and safe, and that's not a very good combination if you aim to do justice to such worthy subject matter, ultimately given enough respect for a decent effort to be crafted, but not with the sense of uniqueness, tightness and consistency that carried the original so far. There's something bland about the lack of liberalism to this revisiting of Alfred Hitchcock's classic, and when liberties are taken to try and bring this subject matter closer to the modern horror industry that its source material actually heavily influenced, the modernist audacity clashes with the old-fashioned flavors in a way that begets tonal unevenness, maybe even something of a cheesy feel. I have a certain admiration to this film for having so much respect for its source material, and for simply being unique in its degree of faithfulness, but really, this remake is plain and simple too much like the original, and while that would leave you to figure that this film is about the same quality as its rewarding source material, the faithfulness actually holds some of a lazy quality. Really, the sheer dragging, only occasionally accompanied by atmospheric dry spells, proves to be rather detrimental to the momentum of this film, but probably not much more than it was to the momentum of the original, whose quality wouldn't define this film's so much if, well, this film didn't obviously want you to draw comparisons. This film isn't about five minutes shorter than the original, but then again, if the original did outstay its welcome, it wasn't by only five minutes, thus, this film has a tendency to drag its feet, particularly with a first half that, like the original, is too distinct from the second in character focus for the transition to feel organic, exacerbating a sense of aimlessness.
Well, that's a distinction, as is this film's being by no means as good as the original, for a couple reasons.Įven if you take out of account this film's sticking a little too close to its original, or if you actually take into account how many films since the original have stuck to its tropes, this particular thriller is mighty lacking in originality, falling into convention after convention and molding, even for that, like, one guy who isn't familiar with this narrative, a predictable path that isn't even tight. something that I probably can't blame him too much on (Hey, comparing him to Vince Vaughn, just try to ignore the good lucks). You know, come to think of it, forget Vaughn, because I'm wondering how the guy who did "Good Will Hunting", of all people, ended up being the one to remake "Psycho", but don't worry people, because the only big difference between this production and the original is the fact that, instead of the woman playing Marion Crane, the director was probably flirting with Viggo Mortensen. Oh, if only this film was that much of a departure from the themes of its source material, but this remake is so overtly close to the original "Psycho" that Van Sant had the audacity to even make a crowbarred cameo at the same point in the story in which Alfred Hitchcock made a crowbarred cameo. Shoot, looking at how much Vaughn's Lester Long character was obsessed with Joaquin Phoenix's Clay Bidwell character, I'm thinking that he was trying to cover something up with his womanizing, and that this is both a continuation of "Clay Pigeons" and of Gus Van Sant's efforts to innovate gay drama filmmaking.
#Viggo mortensen and ann hesche in psycho 1998 clips serial#
Well, actually, I'm probably the only guy who thought that Vaughn was awesome in that film, but either way, the point is that they could have gotten a worse person to play an iconic serial murderer. is something that I would expect to be said by someone who didn't see "Clay Pigeons" the same year this film came out. No matter how startlingly faithful, a remake of a critical hit has to figure out some way to tick people off, and sure enough, whoever thought to cast Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates as Norman Bates must be a psycho. Marion Crane must have stole way more than $400,000, from the box office, that is, because I'd imagine plenty of people were expecting this film to make big money, you know, up until they saw the cast.
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