Psycho

From the minute filmmaker Gus Van Sant announced he was making an "homage" to Alfred Hitchcock's masterful 1960 thriller "Psycho," people have been asking the questions "Will it be any good?" and "Why is he doing this in the first place?"

Sadly, the answers to those questions seem to be (respectively), "Nope," and "We'll have to get back to you on that one."

While Van Sant's "Psycho" is indeed, a shot-for-shot, color remake of the original (it even uses Joseph Stefano's script and Bernard Herrmann's creepy score), it retains little of the frights and the material feels surprisingly dated.

In fact, this is one case in which the director would have been justified in deviating from the source material, as Van Sant was once rumored to be doing. And on top of its too-faithful technical conceits, the film is also doomed by Vince Vaughn's laughable performance as cinema's most memorable serial killer, mother-obsessed milquetoast Norman Bates.

One thing the movie does have in its favor, though, is Anne Heche, who puts her own imprint on cinema's most memorable victim, Marion Crane.

Stuck in a seemingly nowhere job, she impulsively takes money from one of her employer's clients (changed here to $400,000 from the pittance of the original), intending to start a better life with her lover, Sam Loomis (Viggo Mortensen).

Fleeing town by automobile, she ends up at the nearly deserted Bates Motel and even befriends the motel's oddball owner, Norman, who unknowingly convinces her to return the money. But before she can, Marion meets her final fate at the hands of Norman's mother (apparently).

Her disappearance leads others to the Bates Motel, including a private investigator (William H. Macy), as well as both Sam and Marion's sister, Lila (Julianne Moore), who are sure that Norman is hiding something.

Unfortunately for Van Sant, the payoff for this terrific buildup is a huge letdown, and he's unable to sustain any sense of tension, despite Danny Elfman's excellent re-creation of the Herrmann score. And as far as remakes go, this one seems like one of those "paint-by-numbers" hobby kits, with garish hues substituted for the original color scheme.

Also, Van Sant's few "innovations," such as brief nudity, scenes "illuminating" Norman's peeping-tom nature and some subliminal violent images, add nothing to the material.

Neither does Vaughn, who portrays Norman in an oddly menacing fashion from minute one, thereby eliminating any audience sympathy for the character.

"Psycho" is rated R for violent knife attacks, gore, brief female and male nudity, and sex acts, as well as some other sexual activities (overheard).