The impeccable craft of Alfred Hitchcock is showcased even more effectively here, in the director’s take on a B-movie, than it is in many of his loftier projects.

| Sep 28, 2023

Not that [Marion] or we are guilty of the horrors [Norman] is, but this is a movie fundamentally about shame, of which guilt is an inextricable component.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 10, 2023

Psycho comes nearer to attaining an exhilarating balance between content and style than anything Hitchcock has done in years. Of course, it is a very minor work. But its virtues of tension, surprise, virtuosity and control are all major ones.

| Jan 11, 2020

It is one of [Hitchcock's] most brilliantly directed shockers and also his most disagreeable.

| Apr 22, 2019

A brilliant technical exercise, an intimate character study, and the ultimate variant on the premise "boy meets girl."

| Jan 11, 2019

Psycho continues to be thrilling to this day.

| Original Score: A+ | May 31, 2018

Paramount won't let anyone enter theatres where Psycho is playing after the picture starts. No one will want to leave before it is over.

| Jun 16, 2017

The obvious thing to say is that Hitch has done it again; that the suspense of his picture builds up slowly but surely to an almost unbearable pitch of excitement.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 16, 2015

Even now, it's distinctly unnerving.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 8, 2014

After half a century of terror, Psycho is still ensuring that no one feels safe in the shower.

| Oct 6, 2013

Watching Psycho today we are all, like Marion in the shower, vainly trying to recover lost innocence too late.

Full Review | Oct 22, 2012

Hitchcock is the most-daring avant-garde film-maker in America today.

| Oct 8, 2012

Hitchcock's manipulative classic of "pure cinema" does have a heart that pumps human blood, in its sublime parlor scene between Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 27, 2010

The best that can be said is there are bats in the belfry and a well-preserved corpse in the basement. What else can one do but scream?

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 27, 2010

Always worth another look, especially on the big screen.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 2, 2010

Look into Janet Leigh's eye after the shower scene and be amazed how fresh this black-and-white ghoulish chic seems in the saccharine surroundings of modern cinema.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 2, 2010

It blazed a bloody trail for the much-loved slasher cycle, but it also assured us that a B-movie could be A-grade in quality and innovation.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 1, 2010

Two murders and a third attempt are among the most vicious I have ever seen in films, with Hitchcock employing his considerable skill in direction and cutting and in the use of sound and music to shock us past horror-entertainment into resentment.

| Apr 1, 2010

Director Hitchcock bears down too heavily in this one, and the delicate illusion of reality necessary for a creak-and-shriek movie becomes, instead, a spectacle of stomach-churning horror.

| Oct 7, 2008

An unusual, good entertainment, indelibly Hitchcock, and on the right kind of boxoffice beam.

| Oct 7, 2008