5 Reasons You Should Be Watching Bates Motel

Of all the major franchises driven into the ground by increasingly awful instalments, Psycho must be among the worst offenders. Between abysmal sequels, unwatchable remakes and just plain weird attempts at TV spin offs, it€™s a testament to the strength of the original film that it still commands the respect it does. Now halfway through its first season (and renewed for a second), A&E€™s sort of Psycho prequel Bates Motel is an interesting piece of television. I will be the first to admit that it€™s flawed; the dialogue is occasionally pretty awful, it has multiple plot holes and sometimes the motivations of the characters just fail to make any sense. Yet somehow, it€™s still compelling viewing. I€™ve been trying to figure out what it is about Bates Motel that makes it so exciting, and, after many sleepless nights and tortured days, I€™ve boiled it down to five core aspects that sum up why anybody who is a fan of Psycho or just horror/suspense in general should be watching this show.

5. Fear

You might be thinking that this one should be a given. After all, anything even vaguely linked with the original Psycho has an obligation toward being scary. But stop for a moment and think about just how many TV series€™ are genuinely terrifying on the same level as a horror film. Dexter is more concerned with pretending to be existentialist and dragging out its plot than making the most of its dark subject matter. American Horror Story seems to verge on camp weirdness more than genuine fear. Maybe TV as a medium just doesn€™t lend itself all that well to horror, but Bates Motel is doing exceptionally well on this front. The brilliance of it is that all the creepiness comes from the characters and how unpredictable they are. By episode four we already know that Norman Bates is deeply disturbed; he imagines his mother Norma telling him to do things and, in a moment of pure rage, attempts to murder his brother with a meat tenderizer. As an audience we know that this story will inevitably end with Norma, mummified in the basement while her son dresses in her clothes and murders young women. The suspense, however, comes from the fact that there are many other sympathetic characters introduced on the sidelines, and not a single one of them is present in the original Psycho. This, obviously, does not bode well for their fate. Then we have the many scenes that will leave you on the edge of your seat. In the pilot episode alone Norman and his mother meticulously clean up a crime scene, only to have the police arrive halfway through. The body is hidden in the bathroom by a shower curtain; the same bathroom where one of the police goes to take a leak. The whole scene is shot so slowly and carefully, with perfect balance between the cop casually going into the bathroom and the reactions shots of Norman and Norma. I hate to say it, but it€™s very, very Hitchcockian. And so it should be.