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Psycho (1998) – Movie Review
By Robert L. Jones | December 4, 1998
Deja vu not all over again: Anne Heche can't recreate Janet Leigh's primal terror in Gus Van Sant's "Psycho"
Psychobabble
[xrr rating=2.5/5]
Psycho. Starring Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, William H. Macy, and Philip Baker Hall. Cinematography by Christopher Doyle. Edited by Amy E. Duddleston. Music based on an original score by Bernard Herrmann. Orchestrated and conducted by Steve Bartek. Screenplay by Joseph Stefano. Based on the novel by Robert Bloch. Directed by Gus Van Sant. (Universal Pictures, 1998, Color, 105 minutes. MPAA Rating: R.)
I’m not such a Hitchcock purist that I shun everything out there in the suspense genre, lest they be directed by the Master himself. Last year’s The Spanish Prisoner, which borrowed a lot of plot mechanics and the use of the MacGuffin from Hitch, is one example of a movie that lives up to its billing as a suspense picture. However, this so-called remake from Gus Van Sant is an abomination.
I mean, how could Van Sant have so royally screwed the pooch on this production? He shot directly from Joseph Stefano’s original script almost verbatim, right down to the camera setups, sound effects, Bernard Herrmann’s original score, settings, and even Saul Bass’s original titles.
Well, where there’s a will, there’s a way, and Gus Van Sant has just proven that Hitchcock’s genius was not so much in how he designed the schematic for his movies, but rather the exacting attention to detail and passion for his craft he invested in them. Just because Van Sant is adept at painting by the numbers does not make him a master painter. Rather, his clumsy attempt at recreating Hitchcock’s Gothic masterwork only demonstrate how difficult is must have been for Hitchcock to make his movies look so effortlessly natural. By contrast, Van Sant’s take looks belabored and fake, a cubic zirconium from the jewelry section of K-Mart next to the fat man’s priceless gem.
In this ill-advised waste of celluloid, the acting is worse than the High School for the Deaf Thespian Troupe. There are no costumes by Rita Riggs or Edith Head—I think they were picked out by a blind man walking through the Salvation Army thrift shop. The movie has been printed on color film: That makes a whole lot of sense for showcasing the film’s star, the chalky and pasty Anne Heche who butchers Janet Leigh’s defining role (played with much incisive intelligence by Leigh) worse than Norman’s mother does unsuspecting bathers.
Viggo Mortensen, who turned in a great supporting cameo in Carlito’s Way, is miscast here, turning John Gavin’s competent and utilitarian performance into the worse redneck schtick I’ve ever seen. It’s even worse than when Robert deNiro (otherwise an excellent actor) tried to do a believable Southern accent in the botched remake of Cape Fear.
Bernard Herrmann’s score is one of the saving graces of the film, but is as incongruous with the action on the screen as it would be if scored to The Little Mermaid. Further, Steve Bartek and Danny Elfman try to “improve” upon Herrmann’s straightforwardly blunt and brutal score by adding echo-effects, doubling notes and adding eerie sounding strains on the upper strings. These gratuitous notes wreck the whole effect of Herrmann’s “black and white music.” Imagine Andy Warhol being commissioned to “improve” the Mona Lisa with day-glo acrylic paints, and you get the drift of this bad re-orchestration.
But the worst part of this flick is Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates. Not because he’s a bad actor; he’s not. In fact, he sort of reminds me of Orson Welles. He’s just been miscast. He’s way too big and masculine for the part, and comes across almost as much as a mama’s boy as does Mike Ditka. However, as if on cue to remind us of his neuroses, Van Sant has him force a hackneyed and unconvincing “nervous” laugh every few seconds.
Julianne Moore (in Vera Miles’s role as Lila) and William H. Macy (as Arbogast, the detective) give solid, competent performances, but Macy’s wardrobe makes him look boyish. No, not in the James Dean or Danny Kaye kind of way, but rather in the a-four-year-old -just-tried-on-daddy’s-clothes manner. Unfortunately, Daddy must have been a cheap pimp from the 1980’s trying to look like Don Johnson from “Miami Vice” on a Family Dollar store budget. They flop about Macy’s frame like a G.P.-medium tent. Julianne Moore has been modernized by toting a Sony Walkman hither and yon. At the point where she and Sam are about to see Sheriff Chambers, to report a missing person (Heche), Lila punctuates her exit from the scene with “let me get my Walkman.” Her sister and $400,000.00 (inflation) are missing, but can’t forget the tunes!
That’s because this movie has been made relevant for the MTV generation: Dumbed down, so that even in life and death situations, the viewer has Attention Deficit Disorder. Many other lines have been dumbed down, such as Martin Balsam’s “if it doesn’t gel, it isn’t aspic.” From Macy’s mouth, it becomes “Jell-o,” apparently because aspic would be over the heads of the McDonald’s crowd.
Despite trying to modernize the look of the movie, the dialogue is 98% from Joseph Stefano’s original script. That script was written in 1959-60, during the Golden Age of Television, when shows like “The Twilight Zone,” “Perry Mason,” and, yes, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” gave viewers intelligent fare, from writers such as Roald Dahl, Paddy Chayefsky, and Rod Serling. Van Sant’s attempt to use the same script falls flat on its face, because there aren’t many actors available any more who can deliver a straight line, without all the sighing, giggling, breathing, huffing, puffing and ironic twinges that have infested today’s acting (some call it “realism,” I call it “ersatz emotion”).
This movie is about as suspenseful as an episode of “Barney.” Except, it took more talent to create and execute “Barney” than it did to resuscitate this corpse.
Robert L. Jones is a photojournalist living and working in Minnesota. His work has appeared in Black & White Magazine, Entrepreneur, Hoy! New York, the New York Post, RCA Victor (Japan), Scene in San Antonio, Spirit Magazine (Canada), Top Producer, and the Trenton Times. Mr. Jones is a past entertainment editor of The New Individualist.
Topics: Dramas, Horror Movies, Movie Reviews, Remakes, Suspense Movies | Comments Off on Psycho (1998) – Movie Review