Psycho
Metascore
47 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 23 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 11 out of 23
  3. Negative: 4 out of 23
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  1. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Edward Guthmann
    75
    Norman Bates is alive and well, and just a tad kinkier than you remember him.
  2. San Francisco Examiner
    Reviewed by: Walter Addiego
    75
    William H. Macy is fine as the detective Arbogast, wearing a hat he could have borrowed from Martin Balsam in the original role.
  3. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    75
    The film is shot in color and includes an amped-up Danny Elfman version of Bernard Herrmann's haunting score.
  4. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Mary Elizabeth Williams
    70
    May not be anything new, but it's still just as shocking.
  5. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: M. V. Moorhead
    70
    Funny and sort of creepy--a not bad little thriller with some peculiarly dated plot development.
  6. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Elvis Mitchell
    70
    It remains the most structurally elegant and sneakily playful of thrillers. At least some things never change.
  7. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: David Kehr
    63
    Cold, dull, lifeless. [5 December 1998, p.3]
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  8. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Mike Clark
    63
    Untantalizingly reverent remake. [7 December 1998, p.4D]
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  9. Variety
    Reviewed by: Godfrey Cheshire
    60
    A faithful-unto-slavish remake of the 1960 Hitchcock classic, pic contains nothing to outrage or offend partisans of the original, yet neither does it stand to add much to their appreciation.
  10. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Ken Marks
    60
    If the original did not exist, would this picture be worth seeing?
  11. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    50
    It's so slavishly similar to its predecessor - right down to the symbolic lettering on Marion's license plates - that there's little to spark fresh discussion except the acting.
  12. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Rick Groen
    50
    In the shock department, the ante has been upped, way up, and a mere kitchen knife through a shower curtain just doesn't cut it any more.
  13. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    50
    Van Sant's film feels as dated as Hitchcock's, and Hitchcock's has the better excuse.
  14. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Ron Wells
    50
    The movie doesn't stink. The performances are good, potentially great, especially Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates.
  15. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    50
    As Norman Bates, Vince Vaughn makes us better appreciate how much Anthony Perkins brought to the original project. It's clear now that he owned the role and that he shares equally with Hitchcock the credit for making Psycho the memorable creep show it is -- and was.
  16. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Stephen Hunter
    50
    This Psycho seems a little nuts.
  17. Empire
    Reviewed by: Jeff Dawson
    40
    The thrill of the original is seeing a black-and-white, one-foot-on-the-floor, no-sex-please Hays Code world suddenly explode into a slasher movie. Our loss of innocence has, simply, changed all the rules.
  18. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    40
    Hitchcock's Psycho had a lot more than watchability going for it. Van Sant's film impresses only on the level of a cinematic parlor trick, and while that makes it an interesting curiosity, the world doesn't need it.
  19. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    40
    The response for anyone familiar with the original Psycho is likely to be restricted to a narrow range between briefly enjoyable déjà vu and mild disappointment. The movie lacks the chutzpah to even be a travesty.
  20. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    38
    The movie is an invaluable experiment in the theory of cinema, because it demonstrates that a shot-by-shot remake is pointless; genius apparently resides between or beneath the shots, or in chemistry that cannot be timed or counted.
  21. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    38
    Redundant and unnecessary.
  22. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ella Taylor
    30
    Anne Heche is just another neo-noir minx on the make, while Vince Vaughn, grinning and leering as Norman Bates, sinks the movie.
  23. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    0
    Van Sant's doomed and misguided experiment.

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
3.9 out of 10

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 24 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 7
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 7
  3. Negative: 5 out of 7
  1. MarkMusic
    0
    Neither the original nor this remake are scary at all you would have to be younger then 10 to find this scary. If my 12 year old cousin and 6 year old cousin didnt jump once then the film isn't scary.… Full Review »
  2. mbeckford
    0
    Horror fans really should thank Gus Van Sant for his experimental "copy exactly" approach to re-making the horror classic Psycho. Just modernizing the original with a bigger budget takes no creativity and falls into the tedium and redundancy which most horror fan's hate.

    Gus Van Sant's Psycho remake, where nearly every scene is "copied exactly," is a perfect example of this. It was simply BORING. Even for those that never saw this first, the pacing is just too slow for the high-octane generations of the 90's and beyond.

    For a re-make to resonate with an audience that knows the original by heart, it has to deliver a new and different version while staying within the bounds of the original framework. We should be thankful because no director will try this again. For the secret formula to successful horror re-makes, watch 2012's The Evil Dead, 2004's Dawn of the Dead or David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986).    … Full Review »
  3. cameronmorewood
    0
    A pointless, flat remake that is downright offensive to fans of the original masterpiece.
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