It's pretty much the scariest movie I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot

Rating: 8/10 (15 February 2015)

I had seen the shower-scene, I'd seen small parts of it, but never really the whole film in a dark room, until recently. The movie from the 60's, made by one of the best known horror movie creators, Alfred Hitchcock is probably the scariest movie I've ever seen.
The guy who took horror to its new higher levels, Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense. It all began in 1957 when a farmer named Ed Gein wasn't considered much more than a local eccentric was visited by the police. They were working a missing- persons case, found a bloody body in his barn, four chairs upholstered in human skin, a vest made out of a woman's torso and a soup bowl carved from half of a scull. Gein told the police that he liked to take things apart, to see how they worked. Robert Bloch, an author, read the newspaper stories and got the idea for a mystery novel. The first would be that the person likely to be a heroine, a pretty, impulsive thief named Mary, and a crazy woman who would turn out to be a crazy man.
The movie "Psycho" begins with titles informing us of the exact place, date and time. The script developing quickly we meet Marion Crane, a young secretary who's just finished up her hotel-room "quicky" with Sam her lover. If we're watching real close, we can see that she's wearing white underwear, the pure and angelic color. She goes to her office and hears a vulgar client brag about the house he's about to buy in cash as a wedding present for his daughter. We don't really think that Marion is going to run off with the money, because she seems so nice, so honest, but off she goes with $40,000 to marry Sam.
On the run she eventually calls it a night and goes to the Bates Motel, meeting Norman, a nice, charming young man who kind of takes care of Marion, giving her food and is very happy about seeing her. The dialogue between Marion and Norman is wonderful, if you listen carefully you'll hear all about "private traps", "going a little mad sometimes" and "struggling to escape and never budging an inch". When she's in the hotel, she's wearing black underwear, and I think that it kind of is a symbol for the contrast between her pure and good, and then when she's taken the money her underwear is black, dark and bad. She goes into the shower, and all though it's been analyzed endlessly I think it looks far more disturbing for what it really means.
Marion has at this point, decided to return the money and face the consequences. So, does she really deserve to die? Hasn't she just decided to make amends? Norman who unknowingly tosses the $40,000 away, cleaning up his mother's work, doesn't he deserve to make the escape Marion couldn't? I think that in this movie, deserving something has nothing to do with it. It kind of reflects upon if our lives have a divine purpose or not. That we're just pointless spans driven by primitive needs. Are we animals?
Look at the names, she comes from Phoenix (a bird), her last name is Crane (a bird), Norman keeps a stuffed owl in his office, her room is full of pictures of songbirds. Why does Norman say "You eat like a bird"? If we look at Hitchcock's next movie, "The Birds" he kind of showcases that birds are weird creatures, moving by instinct. Just as likely to fly into their own death as away from it. Hitchcock so often capture the characters facing each other in matching profiles, Marion and Norman are kind of alike names, and Sam, Marion's lover looks a little like Norman. Actual mirrors are everywhere, surprising us and the characters with unexpected reflections.
And as I was watching it I couldn't help but think; is Hitchcock just teasing us with the theme of multiple personalities? I don't know, because he doesn't provide us the answers. The private detective who goes looking for Marion falls down the stairs after being slashed, Lila, Marion's sister snoops around and finds an album in Norman's bedroom, but Hitchcock cuts away before we can see the inside. Lila finds the "mother" in the end, and we get explained why Norman is the way he is by an "expert" who's explanation is so flat and unconvincing that I actually started to think that it was the whole purpose, because then we get to see Norman, or "mother".
The movie is strange and goes against all of the normal plots. We liked the heroine, she got killed 40 minutes in. The detective was saving the day, he was killed too. Then we thought, okay, so Sam and Lila will fall for each other, no they didn't. A happy ending at least? If you think that the bad guy, or woman now, smiling in the end of the movie is a happy ending, well, then you got your treat, but I think it's rather scary.
I was scared to be honest, I mean, the worst horror movies are the kinds that are realistic, the ones where we kind of think that it could actually happen. I mean, think about it for a second, how much more realistic is it that there's a man living next door who's a serial killer, a real psychopath rather than a corpse climbing out of the dark? I think that what makes this movie scary, is that it's totally realistic, and it shows us that the darkness of this world, of the human mind can be just as scary even though it was a low-budget film.