Psycho (1960)

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An aptly titled film about a veritable psychopath that has a few twists and turns; it ends up somewhere near where you expect, however still slightly askew. It has the style that epitomises some of the older movies and possibly due to this does not stand up with modern thrillers, there is not enough gore and you never truly fear for the characters too deeply.  

With such a famous scene (the shower murder) the film becomes a victim of its own success, a portion of the film is spent waiting for the scene to happen and it seems to make the beginning inconsequential. It divides the film into two chunks, and actually Hitchcock seems to pre-empt this by switching the character focus from before to after the murder. A permanent fixture is Anthony Perkins who impressively carries his role (or roles) and creates a complex character. 

Unfortunately some of this film is dated and the fact it was made over 50 years ago has to be kept in mind; the shower scene is actually very awkwardly filmed and obviously hiding the fact that no violence is actually occurring. This cannot really be helped, however from a modern perspective it detracts from the thriller elements of the film.  The ending also feels slightly rushed, after the big mystery reveal the writer decides to just fill in all the gaps with a speech by the doctor. His is poor writing as it should be able to be weaved into the narrative rather than have to be fed to the audience.