The crimes of Hitchcock's Psycho are theft and imitation. Van Sant turns those into an aesthetic and, I think, into a triumph of queer cinema.

| Jul 12, 2023

If Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s widely celebrated thriller Psycho (1960) is not one of the most unfairly maligned features of its decade, then it must surely be one of the least-well understood.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 28, 2022

Van Sant knows what he’s doing with the source material.

| Oct 27, 2022

Gus Van Sant's Psycho is as it is because he knows that we have already seen Hitchcock's version, and that, despite replicating the original scene to scene, he also takes unexpected directions. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 12, 2019

Gus Van Sant's oddball, shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic...

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 6, 2018

The cast is fantastic, sure, but they're wasted in a sea of redundancy.

| Oct 23, 2013

failed project

| Original Score: D | Apr 25, 2013

What Van Sant's film does, tremendously well, is make the material foreign again.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 1, 2012

a true labour of love, an homage in such deliriously infatuated thrall to its inspiration that it seems more arthouse folly than studio cashcow - or, to cite the psychiatrist near the end of Psycho, "these were crimes of passion, not profit."

Full Review | Oct 22, 2012

A futile, soulless shot-by-shot remake of Hitchcock's masterpiece.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Aug 7, 2012

| Original Score: A | Sep 7, 2011

Already my mother and I mourn the day when some AVID editor will dare to digitally tweak Vertigo, spinning it into a virtual romantic comedy starring computer-directed replicas of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

| Aug 21, 2009

Contains nothing to outrage or offend partisans of the original, yet neither does it stand to add much to their appreciation.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2009

...the Hitchcock film relied for its effects on originality and creativity. Van Sant's remake substitutes rote repetition and cliches that have long since lost their value.

| Sep 16, 2008

"Psycho" doesn't do much for Van Sant, and he doesn't do much for "Psycho."

| Original Score: D | Sep 22, 2007

Vaughn's Norman Bates is much inferior because he lacks the natural neurosis of Anthony Perkins.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Aug 13, 2007

Deserves closer consideration than it received.

| May 26, 2006

Hitchcock probably wouldn't tell this story if he was making films today, and he certainly wouldn't tell it this way, with internal 'voices', back projection, minimal nudity and violence.

| Feb 9, 2006

The movie doesn't stink. The performances are good, potentially great, especially Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates, but he owns a scene just for doing that psychotic giggle of his.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 6, 2005

A lot of people may not get the point of recreating a work such as Psycho. I didn't get it, until I saw the film.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 9, 2005