This horror sequel should’ve never been made. Here’s why it works for me

Nothing is sacred in Hollywood. But that’s not a recent truism — it’s always held true. If Hollywood smells an opportunity to take advantage or exploit, it will do so with gusto. Take, for instance, Psycho. You can’t get more sacred than that, right? Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal 1960 film changed cinema forever, and while it was immediately ripped off left and right, no one dared touch it in the two decades after it was released.

Yet the film also made a ton of money, and if it worked once, why can’t it work again? Director Gus Van Sant, flush from his 1997 commercial breakthrough with Good Will Hunting, certainly thought so and remade it in 1998. That version flopped, but he wasn’t the first to go back to the Psycho well to ring an extra buck or two. The relatively unknown Australian director Richard Franklin (Roadgames, Fantasm) was hired by Universal to make a follow-up to Hitchcock’s classic in 1983, three years after the Master of Suspense had passed away.

Another flop, right? Well, not exactly. It was a hit when it was released, and some notable film publications like Variety praised it. Even Quentin Tarantino is a fan. Psycho II probably should’ve never been made; after all, who needs a sequel to Norman Bates’ descent into madness? But watching it over 40 years later, it’s remarkable how well it holds up. It’s clearly indebted to its predecessor, but by the end, it carves out its own unique identity as a nasty little shocker with a sucker punch of an ending.

What happens when Norman Bates comes home

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Psycho II takes places 22 years after the original. In that time, Norman Bates has been rehabilitated in a mental hospital and, against the wishes of his psychiatrist, Dr. Bill Raymond (Robert Loggia), decides to move back to his hometown. Once there, he tries to reintegrate into society by taking a job as a short order cook at a local diner, where he befriends the elderly waitress Mrs. Spool (Claudia Bryar) and her twentysomething co-worker, Mary (Meg Tilly). Although he’s a bit dazed from the transition from patient to regular citizen again, Norman is seemingly content and rid of the murderous impulses from long ago.

But a lot has changed since 1960. No longer a literal black-and-white world, the life Norman once had is long gone. Customers and townies are suspicious of him. Is he really sane? Is the Mother persona truly gone? To make matters worse, the Bates Motel has fallen into disrepair under the management of Warren Toomey (Dennis Franz), a sleazoid whose side business is dealing drugs and looking away as prostitutes use the motel’s cheap bedrooms for business.

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And then there’s Lila Loomis (Vera Miles), the sister of Norman’s most famous victim, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh). She’s livid that he’s been released, and thinks he’s not as cured as he’s letting on. She’s constantly hovering around, keeping her eye on Norman, and maybe cooking up a plot of her own to put Norman back where he belongs for good.

It’s not hard to share her worry since as soon as Norman settles back into civilian life, and begins to grow closer to Mary, his past begins to haunt him. He relives childhood memories of him poisoning his mother, he acts strange when fondling a shiny knife, and, worst of all, he starts receiving strange notes from someone called Mother. Is Norman’s long-deceased mom somehow back from the grave? Or is Norman’s fragile sanity already starting to crack?

Caught between an ode to Hitchcock and a schlocky slasher

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And so Psycho II begins more or less how you’d think it would begin — with Norman back in his old stomping grounds, and the threat of Mother looming in the background. And let’s get this out of the way right now: Psycho II isn’t nearly as good as Psycho. It can’t be, but what it is a fascinating movie to watch as it more less succeeds as an ode to Hitchcock’s original and an effective slasher film in its own right.

Throughout the movie, there’s this tension between the director’s intentions in crafting a worthy successor to Psycho and fulfilling the violent demands of the slasher genre. Psycho II was made in 1983, and the horror genre was still in its peak slasher cycle with releases likes Sleepaway Camp and Amityville 3-D. Franklin couldn’t make his sequel as bloodless and subtle as Hitchcock’s original; the marketplace simply wouldn’t allow it. And so Psycho II contains far more murders, and graphic violence, than Hitchcock ever put on screen.

Psycho II delicately straddles the line between the two, which results in surprisingly artful movie that is punctuated by some pretty gruesome murders. For instance, there’s a sequence involving two teenagers who sneak into Norman’s home to make out and smoke weed in the basement. They’re interrupted by Mother, or someone dressed as Mother, and the teenage boy is stabbed to death while the girl runs away.

The sequence itself is superfluous; it adds nothing except another kill to the film’s total kill count. But it’s here where Franklin shows some artistry in his mayhem by framing the murder as a series of quick cuts, like how Hitchcock staged Marion’s memorable death in the shower, and concluding it by having the boy’s dying hand streak a dusty window. Franklin then frames the girl’s escape from the house in an extreme overhead shot that accentuates the Bates home as a tall, almost cathedral-like, building, dwarfing the terrified girl as she runs away.

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Those overhead shots will pop up throughout Psycho II as well as Dutch angles and inventive use of light and shadow that clues us into Norman’s crumbling state of mind. Nothing like that is seen in typical slashers of this era, and while the deaths are violent and gory (one character gets stabbed through the mouth!), they aren’t that out of place. Psycho gave birth to the slasher genre, so it’s only fitting its sequel play by the rules it helped establish.

The sequel’s ending is just as good as Psycho’s

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Another aspect of Psycho II that makes it a worthy sequel is the sheer amount of twists its increasingly bonkers plot has. This movie constantly surprises you, and just when you think you know what’s going on, another surprise is revealed … or another major character is swiftly killed off to keep you guessing as to who’s behind Mother’s return. It’s not every day a slasher can keep you in suspense, but Psycho II does so with skill, and it never lets up.

The film also nails the ending, and I think it’s just as good, and just as shocking, as Psycho‘s. That’s high praise, but Psycho II earns it, and closes on a note that’s just as unsettling as a young Norman smiling at the screen in the original. Stop reading now if you don’t want to be spoiled.

In the final moments of Psycho II, Norman is visited by Mrs. Spool late one night at his home. Remember her? She’s one of Norman’s co-workers at the diner. Well, it turns out she’s much more than just a friend — she’s Norman’s real mother, and she’s the one that’s been murdering people in order to protect her fragile son.

How is that possible? In a monologue set in Norman’s kitchen, she confesses that after she gave birth to him, she couldn’t handle being a mother, so she gave him to her sister to raise. She didn’t contact Norman when he was growing up as she was in mental institutions through most of her adult life. She knew Norman would come back eventually, so she got a job at the diner and has been biding her time until his return.

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Norman takes in all this news with surprising calmness and offers his new mother some tea. As she is sipping it, and as we’re wondering if he’s poisoned it (he has a history of doing that), he calmly picks up a shovel and bashes her over the head with it. The chair shatters, she falls to the ground, and as her body convulses, Norman begins to whistle and pull the shades down.

Everything about this scene is magnificently executed. From the sudden act of violence, which Franklin accomplishes all in one shot with absolutely no edits, to the gradual pull into an overhead shot that frames Mrs. Spool’s dying body in a grotesque tableau, this sequence left me just as flabbergasted as I was the first time I realized Norman was really Mother in the 1960 original.

For Norman Bates, you can go home again

Universal Pictures

It’s a stunning climax, and as we see Norman, who’s been innocent this entire time, revert back to his Mother persona by placing Mrs. Spool’s body in the window overlooking the Bates Motel, Franklin achieves the same effect that Hitchcock achieved when he has a captured Norman, as “Mother,” smile menacingly at the camera all those years ago. Both endings are deeply disturbing, but Psycho II is maybe more scary since Norman is now free to kill again.

Did Psycho II need to be made? Probably not, but it was, and it could’ve been far worse. That sounds like faint praise, but the movie is a worthy follow-up to a beloved classic, one that is so well-known, even the people who have never watched it know what it is, and it honors the sad, mad story of Norman Bates. The sequel completes Norman’s tragic arc and underlines the true horror behind this twisted tale. For people like Norman, home is where the horror is, and there’s no escaping it, no matter how hard you try.

Psycho II is streaming on Netflix. Need more streaming recommendations? Check out the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Max, and the best movies on Disney+.