Psycho Details

We all go a little mad sometimes, but Gus Van Sant must have been clinically insane when he agreed to direct this near word-for-word, scene-for-scene impersonation of Alfred Hitchcock's most celebrated movie. It simply doesn't work, because every major character is horribly miscast — Anne Heche plays Marion Crane as a kooky cutie and Vince Vaughn's Norman is an effeminate hunk. Van Sant's handling of Hitch's two stunning murder sequences is botched, too, by inserting redundant surreal flash-frames and shooting Heche in a comical final death pose. Despite the hilarious modern references (Julianne Moore's dangling earphones are a hoot), the pointlessness of this stagey, badly acted replica of one of cinema's true masterpieces cannot be ignored. It's a film whose sole merit is being the strangest remake in cinema history.

A genuine curiosity, though, unfortunately, not a very interesting one: a remake of Hitchcock's thriller that hardly deviates from the original, except that it is in colour, the acting is inferior, and the content is a little tired.