Rating of
0.5/4
A horrible remake?! WHAT A FUCKING TWIST!!
The Film Rebel - wrote on 11/28/10
In all honesty, while I do feel that Psycho is one of the greatest, if not THE greatest horror film of all time and needs no remake, I thought that with the right director and with the right cast a remake wouldn't be so bad. Well if you have that little idea set in mind when going into Gus Van Sant's Psycho starring Vince Vaughn, you will be SEVERELY dissapointed. This is one of the most pointless and laughable excuses for a remake of such a beloved classic.
Well, let me start off by giving a bit of history behind this one. The year was 1998. This was just a few years before we had this big remake craze that we had today. Some jackass at Universal (who apparently had one too many martinis at lunch hour) said "Hey! Why not remake Psycho!" Oh, what a brilliant idea!
They then proceeded by hiring none other than Gus Van Sant, hot off of Good Will Hunting. Oh, and you will not believe who they casted as Norman Bates. Oh, you are going to laugh your ass off. VINCE FUCKING VAUGHN as Norman Bates!! What the hell's next? Mike Myers as Michael Myers?!?! They couldn't pay me to make this shit up!!
Oh, and to make matters worse, this whole remake is SHOT BY SHOT!! The only difference between this and the original is that it's in color with a different cast. Aside from a couple of modernizations and a scene with Bates whackin' it, this is the exact same movie!! If I wanted the same movie, I'd just rent the original. There's gotta be a colored version of it out there somewhere.
On top of that, the acting is just dreadful. Vince Vaughn tried his best but he failed. He just couldn't live up to Tony Perkins' performance in the original. And Anne Heche? Good God! She's absolutely awful. The only actor who did a better than average job was William H. Macy as Arbogast.
When going into a remake, I usually try to keep an optimistic outlook (unless its a Michael Bay remake). For example, I had the lowest of low expectations for The Dawn of the Dead remake, but I found myself quite impressed. Why? Because it tried something new whilst staying true to the original! Psycho '98 completely fails in both those aspects. It attempts to pay tribute to the original but it fails because its too true to the original and doesn't even try anything new! Again, besides a couple modernizations, its the same movie!
All in all, stay the FUCK away from this movie. If you wanna watch Psycho, watch the original. Black and white, color, I don't care! Just stay the hell away from this shit heap as far as you possibly can. All I can say is somewhere Hitchcock is rolling over in his grave.
