Psycho 1960

Rating: 9/10 (5 May 2014)

Psycho is a one of a kind, the fact that there is even a remake of this movie is comical, and the remake compared to the original is laughable. Hitchcock's Psycho is intriguing and suspenseful, however I wouldn't personally call Psycho a scary movie, but it definitely leaves you with an uneasy feeling by the end of the movie. Hitchcock is known for many things, one being his use of McGuffins. A McGuffin is when a movie has an item or piece of information that seems to be important to the story but really has no meaning, it is used for suspense. In Psycho the McGuffin would definitely be the envelope of money, in the start we believe that the whole movie is going to surround Marion Crane and how she will get away with the stolen money. But Hitchcock then throws us off track when our main lead is killed within the first 30 minutes of the movie. I liked this aspect of the movie; I found it interesting to spend so much time on the plot only to completely change it, something I personally have never experienced before. Of course many people know the famous shower scene in Psycho, when Marion Crane is murdered. This scene is used as a great example of the use of quick shots, being that this short scene has so many shots, and the shots themselves are so strategically framed. Not once is there any nudity or gore, never do we see the knife cut Marion, but instead we are almost forced to visualize the violence in our own heads, filling in the blank. Psycho is a classic Hitchcockian film; it really shows and illustrates his style and like most of his movies, is very entertaining.