Psycho psycho, are you there?

Psycho. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

Perf. Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Janet Leigh.

Universal Studios, 1960 film

As a young student in the twenty first century, I often find myself lacking the time to engage in movies, and if I am able to overcome the time constraints related to the movie watching process I often choose to watch the newest and most popular films of the current time period. I like a strong lead up with an unexpected ending. With current movies it's often easy to predict an "I am your father situation" due to the fact that they roll around in a new major motion picture every other month. These are wasted millions of dollars poured into an overplayed plot with low-rated actors with no better movie offers but what they have in front of them. Like many others I hold a strong liking to horror movies, although I believe the late 90's through the early 2000's were the prime time for these films. After this period they started to take a sharp turn for a strong repetitive nature, so I often disregard many movies due to already having a jist of the outcome. When it comes to older movies I am often quick to use this same judgment although there is a line very hard to place. When did these basic movie plots become the norm? When were they not so basic? Which was the first of many movies to see a girl get killed in a shower?

I have grown to lose hope for these films, and honestly just dread most of them. That being said when I found out we would be watching Psycho (Dir. Alfred Hitchcock) in my Intro to Film Studies class I was not as eager as I may have been if we were going to be seeing the Bee Movie (Dir. Steve Hickner). Although, sometimes in this world you must do things you are not always 100% on, with future hopes of finding it better than you expected. This was somewhat the case for me while previewing this movie.

I was not able to guess the plot from the first twenty minutes, which is a point for Hitchcock. I was shocked at the plot twist even though I have seen newer movies and renditions of this same story, so congrats Alfred. Although it was a probable 35% better than I expected it to be, the scares were weak, the actors showed minimal emotion, Janet Leigh played into her stereotypical role of a dumb broad with little sense in how to: safety, and also it lacked miniature details that are made to play together to give the background of the story. I believe if the movie was even just a wee bit more realistic it may have been more appealing to me. I mean honestly, if she drives for hours upon hours at a time to get to this motel in the middle of nowhere, how does a shady P.I. find this out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere dingy cabin style motel and back to their town in a short one hour period? And also, that shower scene was just pathetic.

Do not waste your time, watch the Bee Movie.