9 Movie Prequels That Created Massive Plot Holes

5. Who Built The Motel? - Psycho IV: The Beginning

A prequel to Psycho is totally unnecessary. Alfred Hitchcock's horror masterpiece more than satisfyingly explains how Norman Bates became a killer without ever slipping into flashback. Any origin story needs to go full-out reimagining (see Bates Motel) or resign itself to being pointless.

Predictably, when the rebooted franchise (two straight-up slashers were made in the eighties) halted, the fourth movie decided to explicitly show those roots, told by a rehabilitated yet fearful Norman Bates calling up a radio show (yeah, if that first draft idea didn't give you a clue, it's not very good). The film dramatises all the spiel from the psychiatrist at the end of the original (domineering mother, murdering female visitors and all that), but there's one mistake that suggests the filmmakers forgot to check the rest of the movie for hints at backstory.

In Psycho, when chatting with future-victim Marion Craine, Norman reveals it was his mother's lover's idea to build the motel, yet when the boyfriend turns up in The Beginning the worst place to stay in the tri-county area is already up and running.

On a side note, the made-for-TV movie completely disregards Psychos II and III, with no mention of the love-triangle between Norman's parents and his aunt, although given how dire things were by the third film that's less of a crime.