10 Most Pointless Horror Movies Ever Made
7. Psycho (1998)
On the surface of it, there's not much wrong with Gus Van Sant's Psycho. It is a good film. The problem is, it's not his film.
The director has spent his career alternating between large, award-winning productions like Good Will Hunting, and quirky, avant-garde passion projects like Gerry and Elephant, and in the late '90s, he got the opportunity to conduct a high-profile piece of experimental filmmaking, when he remade Alfred Hitchcock's horror classic Psycho.
Rather than mount a new perspective on the material, Van Sant put his $60 million budget and impressive cast (Vince Vaughn, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, William H Macy) to work on remaking the original movie shot for shot. The result is undeniably interesting, but just not as good as the original - and thoroughly pointless to boot. After all, following initial curiosity, why would anyone watch an inferior version of exactly the same movie when given the choice? Psycho was ravaged by the critics and has faded into obscurity as a result, with even Van Sant himself reasoning that the end result probably wasn't worth the effort.