I have to admit--I was interested in seeing what a direct remake of Psycho would be like. And I'm a big fan of Hitchcock and of this film in particular. And what happened? There are little differences in the remake that destroy the delicate balance I evidently had taken for granted in the original Psycho. The acting in the remake is inferior to that of the original, with the exception of excellent Julianne Moore and William H. Macy. Viggo Mortensen is appealing, even if his role is thankless. However, Vince Vaughn, in the film's most important role, is bad--he has none of the subtlety Anthony Perkins brought to the role, and his take isn't different enough from Perkins' to stand on its own. Even Danny Elfman's pumping-up of Bernard Herrmann's score for the original just winds up sounding like the theme for Re-Animator, which was, well, a pumped-up version of the Psycho score.

In college, I wrote an eleven-page paper on mise en scene in the original film. The first Psycho is fascinating in many ways, and one of them is the way objects are placed in the frame--many shots are filled with symbolic objects in meticulously set locations. After watching this new Psycho, I am convinced I know more about the original film than does Gus Van Zant. There are many subtle missteps in the remake, the combined effect of which is to essentially ruin much of the subtext the original film had. The cop's sunglasses. Lack of deep focus in the parlor. Sorely deficient use of shadow in the scene by the marsh. And the one scene for which this version will be remembered--the masturbation scene. It's all wrong; Norman's mental problems stem not from guilt over expressing sexual feelings but rather from having those feelings in the first place. If nothing else, the Psycho remake proves that someone can take a great idea and an intelligent script and turn them into a bad film. All it takes is misinterpretation. And maybe a little narcissism.