Not a real killer of a film

Rating: 6/10 (6 June 2013)

Not a real killer of a film
This review contains spoilers
Psycho is a film made by Alfred Hitchcock in 1960, in this film you follow Marion Crane who has stolen $40.000 and who is therefore on the run, she is planning to use the money to marry her beloved Sam in California. On the way there however, the weather had turned very bad and she was forced to sleep at a remote motel where she meets Norman, an innocent young man who seems to have a strong relationship with his mother, who is the owner of the motel, and he also seems very harmless. When Marion goes missing however Sam and her sister investigate her missing together and they come to a horrible conclusion.
*SPOILERS* When the private detective Arbogast goes to investigate the house of Norman and his mother but he gets killed as well. Sam and Lila (Marion's sister) go to the deputy's office to find out about Normans mother but the deputy tells them that Normans mother is long dead and buried. They go to the motel in disguise as a married couple and search Marion's room, Sam is suspicious and starts to interrogate Norman and tries to make him confess to the murder but Norman knocks Sam out, in the meantime Lila goes to the house on top of the hill and starts to look around there. When she sees Norman approaching she hides in the basement and she finds Normans mother there in a chair but she is dead and rotten. Suddenly Norman comes in from behind with a wig similar to his mothers hair and also clothes that look like his mothers, just before he can stab Lila Sam comes in from behind and subdues him. The shot then changes into a police station where you can see Norman in a chair and talking to himself like he is his mother. *ENDING SPOILERS*
Psycho was a rather revolutionary film when it came out. This was because of the shocking ideas, the good camera-work and new ways of producing. Nowadays the ideas aren't shocking anymore and the new ways of producing isn't new. The camera-work is still interesting though. Combined with the music and the special effects it created a lot of tension in some parts of the movie. Because of this the producer Alfred Hitchcock is sometimes called: The master of suspense. It is too bad that the movie had a slow progressing plot, because this causes people to lose their attention. Things like this show us how old the movie actually is, nowadays movie-plots progress really fast to keep the attention of the viewers, but at that time Psycho had a fast-progressing plot. The standards for movies have changed. In our opinion Psycho is getting past its expirations date.
The setting of the movie is mostly at the motel of Norman Bates. The place has a dark atmosphere and especially Norman Bates house. The camera-work in the film was good because it was focused on a lot, for example in the famous shower scene over 70 different camera positions were used so you know the director worked hard on the scene to make it as good as he could. The film is also a first of its kind in many aspects, a toilet being flushed and seeing Marion in her underwear, of course nowadays this is not really special to us but back then this was very revolutionary. The use of sound in the film was good because it created a lot of tense moments an when the music started to play you knew something bad was going to happen. The special effects were bad for us though because we automatically compare them to the special effects that are used in films now even though we try not to and they are really laughable. Editing was used effectively in this film and it had to too, because if we again look at the shower scene you never see Marion actually get stabbed but because the film was edited in such a way you automatically know she did get stabbed this is also the case in the scene where the private investigator got stabbed. Then there is the plot, the part of the film that made the film so bad for us, the plot progresses very slowly and it was hard to not get distracted while watching the film, if there was any action which was rare it would only last for a couple of seconds or minutes if you were lucky.
We thought the film was not that amazing for us. The film was hard to understand and it was a very slow story. You have to watch it several times to understand everything in full detail. This is very usual in Hitchcock's films so we could have expected this. The film was not very action packed in comparison to today's standard, nowadays we have much more action in films than there was in psycho. The special effects are not that special, but again that has to do with the standards from today. It was not an interesting movie for us however if you look on the other side of things psycho was a renewing movie. Everything was original at that time and the movie was made from a low budget. It set the standard for thriller movies today and the film will always be an example. You will like the movie if you want a good story but if you want more action and adventure we would not recommend this movie.