Connect with us

News

Mick Garris’ Psycho IV: The Beginning Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary

Published

on

Psycho

The blood that Norman Bates cried out to his mother about has long since dried. Psycho and The Bates Motel have long been at rest. Alfred Hitchcock’s tremendous stark black-and-white nightmare started a franchise that lead to three subsequent films, a shot-for-shot remake, and a television series. But, in careful and recent rediscovery, I’ve found that Mick Garris’ Psycho IV: The Beginning was easily the best of the lot, next to Hitchcock’s perfect original.

Speaking recently in an episode of Post Mortem with Mick Garris, the director answers several questions about Psycho IV. Those questions range from its early production to actually working with Anthony Perkins. The entire episode is to celebrate the film’s 30th anniversary and is worth a listen if you haven’t already.

Psycho IV was always a genuinely terrifying and disturbing ride. But not for the reasons that Hitchcock’s original was.

Psycho

Garris’ direction combined with Joseph Stefano script allowed us to be a fly on the wall during Norman’s childhood and the events that lead to Bates becoming Bates as we know him. The terror smartly doesn’t try to repeat itself resting on previous entries; i doesn’t creep out at you from any of the familiar places. Instead, the terror is delivered via memory. A stained memory that in itself drove Norman mad. It dares you to experience that very memory in its runtime. It dares you to not go mad.

Garris and Stefano do this by sharing a traumatic sexual awakening that Norman has while growing up as an isolated, only-child around his mother. Each scene that features loving mother and lonely son, becomes more and more uncomfortable as the film moves. We ultimately have, strange scenes buried under an shaky unease and misguided love, compounded by Mrs. Bates’ bi-polar nature. The combination makes for a powder-keg of emotions and creeping cringe.

All of Norman’s childhood is shared via a late night radio show exploring young men who have killed their mothers. It’s a smart wraparound. It gives a nice canvas to paint on and at no time does any of it feel like a retread of any of the prior Psycho films. It smartly carves its own trail. Most importantly, it doesn’t show how the sausage is made,  sure, we are seeing Norman’s upbringing but Psycho IV never sets out to say “here is why Norman went crazy.” Instead, Garris plays with color and setups to reveal the radius of madness but doesn’t ruin Norman by over explaining or pointing a bloody finger to any sort of explanation overkill.

I also, found it really great to go back and watch a very overlooked Henry Thomas role. Thomas, who plays young Bates, does so with a real vulnerability and a retcon exploration of Anthony Perkins and his approach to Norman Bates. It’s great to have just finished Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Bly Manor and to now watch Henry Thomas explore his British Gent of a character and then watch him in his youth as he embodies precocious Bates.

Psycho IV is smart, and worth a revisit and  re-exploration. Garris shoots the hell out of this thing and manages to do things with it that I don’t think would have been touched if placed in other hands.

Psycho IV: The Beginning celebrates its 30th anniversary on Nov. 10.

Psycho

Mick Garris confirms cameo in upcoming The Stand remake.

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Movies

‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

Published

on

It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Continue Reading

Movies

‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

Published

on

Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Continue Reading

News

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

Published

on

Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Continue Reading