Thriller Film Case Study - Psycho

Institutional Information

• Psycho (1960)



• Directed by Alfred Hitchcock



• Date of release: 16th June 1960



• Country made: USA



• Awards: Nominated for four Academy Awards, Janet Leigh - Golden Globe winner for performance



• Genre: Thriller

Audience Response

External Reviews

The Film initially received a mixed response from critics when first released;

'A blot on an honourable career, plainly a gimmick movie'

'Widely regarded as Hitchcock's best film, "Psycho" is certainly his most imitated and perhaps his most influential. Ostensibly a Grand Guignol thriller with Freudian undertones, it's a perfectly realised, visually rich, and chilling look at masculinity and schizophrenia that had more than a hand in redefining the role of the spectator in terms of mainstream cinema, most notably perhaps in the famous shower sequence which re-explored the nature of cinematic voyeurism.
As effective as it is as a genre piece, the proceedings are of course shot through with Hitchcock¹s sly, mordant and slightly sadistic humour which revels in the consequences of the oedipally induced madness and the sardonic irony of much of the dialogue ("Mother's not herself today"). For all its playfulness however, it's still gripping and irrevocably gruesome fare played to perfection by a top notch cast, chief amongst them a suitably jumpy Perkins in a career defining role. An audacious treasure trove of riches'.

- BBC Films Review by David Wood

However, the public seemed to have a different opinion and the film was successful because of them.

User Ratings

Out of 110,000 votes, Psycho has received an 8.7/10 rating on the Internet Movie Database.

Men and women seem to both have enjoyed the film thoroughly, with positive reviews from both genders.

How the director utilises the generic codes and conventions of the thriller film

The Shower Scene

This is perhaps the most famous scene of the entire thriller, where the main character (and also criminal) Marion Crane, takes a shower in the sleazy motel room she has just rented for a night.

The mise-en-scene uses a camera lens with deep focus, this allows the audience to see everything around the subject. There are many close ups to show Marion washing herself and also of the shower head spurting out water (perhaps relating to how she could be bleeding in the same way later on). The camera moves around her showing different angles of the subject, this allows us to see what surroundings she is in, with only the semi-transparent shower curtain in view. This adds to the generic thriller theme of confined spaces. The lighting of this part of the scene is ambient and the director uses very bright lights as it makes everything visible and perhaps more scary. The sound within the scene is diegetic as all that can be heard is the sound of the water running from the shower head. The music however, is non-diegetic and is made up of the classic thriller music, which has made the film so memorable. It builds up, getting louder and more dramatic as it leads to the inevitable murder of Marion by the Psycho Vince Vaughn.
The Director uses all of these methods to create a generic thriller sequence.