Psycho
I actually enjoyed this movie a lot. It was very suspenseful and actually got me really scared even though the visual effects/sound effects were pretty bad. This was a good mystery film because it kept me wondering who the murderer was. At first, when they showed Norman Bates, I thought he was a nice guy until their conversation in the office and his creepy birds in the room. When Marion got murdered, I thought it was Bates at first (I thought he was crazy with perhaps multiple personalities, and I was actually surprised that I was right in the end!), and then they made me believe that it was the mother, when in fact at the end we see that it actually was Bates. The confusion and doubt that the plot kept giving me made the story very interesting even though it turns out my initial prediction was right.
Bates was reallly creepy and I'm glad that we got strictly good people in the end (Lila and Sam) on our side and that we didn't have to question if they were good or bad, because the movie was scary enough. I especially liked the last scene, where Bates, as the mother, talked about not even harming the fly because that felt like such an iconic line in the movie. His smile was extremely creepy, as was his personality throughout the entire movie. It did bother me a lot, though, when he was so terrible at lying when the investigator was questioning him--all of the characters were being way too obvious in what they were hiding. I was also hoping to see the police guy again as an important character since he was creepily stalking Marion in the beginning, but he just disappeared.
Though the movie was pretty exciting, there actually wasn't many parts where evidence was actually brought up. In fact, most of the evidence that we find are actually things that the viewers already know exist, so this makes the movie different in that we have the evidence but we don't exactly know the truth, meanwhile in other mystery stories like in Sherlock Holmes, we don't know the truth and the evidence is handed down to us one by one, allowing us to figure out the truth along with the detectives. Because we already saw what had happened, we were only left to figure out who actually did it and how the "detectives", which in the end are Sam and Lila, will figure it out. This is interesting because the viewers know more than the detectives do, and we don't have much more evidence to find out and just have to wait until the end to figure out if what we thought had happened was actually true. But even though the use of evidence wasn't very prominent in the movie, the journey and suspense in watching the detectives try to figure it out was the most exciting part of the movie.
Bates was reallly creepy and I'm glad that we got strictly good people in the end (Lila and Sam) on our side and that we didn't have to question if they were good or bad, because the movie was scary enough. I especially liked the last scene, where Bates, as the mother, talked about not even harming the fly because that felt like such an iconic line in the movie. His smile was extremely creepy, as was his personality throughout the entire movie. It did bother me a lot, though, when he was so terrible at lying when the investigator was questioning him--all of the characters were being way too obvious in what they were hiding. I was also hoping to see the police guy again as an important character since he was creepily stalking Marion in the beginning, but he just disappeared.
Though the movie was pretty exciting, there actually wasn't many parts where evidence was actually brought up. In fact, most of the evidence that we find are actually things that the viewers already know exist, so this makes the movie different in that we have the evidence but we don't exactly know the truth, meanwhile in other mystery stories like in Sherlock Holmes, we don't know the truth and the evidence is handed down to us one by one, allowing us to figure out the truth along with the detectives. Because we already saw what had happened, we were only left to figure out who actually did it and how the "detectives", which in the end are Sam and Lila, will figure it out. This is interesting because the viewers know more than the detectives do, and we don't have much more evidence to find out and just have to wait until the end to figure out if what we thought had happened was actually true. But even though the use of evidence wasn't very prominent in the movie, the journey and suspense in watching the detectives try to figure it out was the most exciting part of the movie.
I really liked the first line of your post that the film "got me really scared even though the visual effects/sound effects were pretty bad" because I experienced a really similar situation. I usually HATE old movies because of the bad quality sound and visuals compared to modern suspense movies and thrillers with all of the high tech stuff. However, somehow this movie managed to be better than most other old movies I've seen. I think its because of the extreme suspense and element of surprise that this movie has. I found that it distracted me from thinking too hard about anything other than the plot which I think is a really important quality for a suspenseful film to have.
ReplyDeleteYour comments are interesting about how obvious and fake the acting was. For example, when Norman lied to Arbogast, his behavior was exaggerated. However, the reason for the over-the-top drama is similar to the "Maltese Falcon". Many of the actors during the mid-20th century were trained in theater performances, where being over-the-top was expected. So, they would act the same way in movies, even though now movie actors are trained to be more realistic and subdued in their mannerisms. But, I think the exaggeration made the movie more pleasurable and exciting to watch!
ReplyDelete