Review – Psycho 4: The Beginning

A radio psychologist devotes a show to boys who killed their mothers, and who should call in but our old pal Norman Bates. The tale that unfolds is primarily made up of flashbacks to Norman: the early years. As it turns out, Norman’s mother wasn’t the old crone we thought she was. Instead, she’s an attractive if slightly insane young woman who enjoys an intensely Oedipal relationship with her son, a relationship even more physically Freudian than implied in the first three Psycho movies. The back-story might have worked quite well if the presentation had been a little more even, but the flashbacks appear to show up out of chronological order. The result is a story that’s interesting but occasionally a bit hard to follow. The script also relies heavily on slasher movie clichés (the villain that won’t die, and so on). This isn’t a bad example of the genre, but it might have been better. Mildly amusing