What’s left to say about Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece that hasn’t already been said a dozen times over? It’s the movie that cut the ribbon – via a downward slashing motion – on 1960s filmmaking, breaking damn near every established taboo of the previous decades, from violence to sex, to plotting, to showing a toilet in use. It helped invent the slasher flick, anticipated the splatter film and elevated horror to high art. It’s spawned innumerable imitators and parodies, some subpar sequels, a TV spinoff, a biopic, a documentary and a shot-for-shot remake. If there’s anything ‘new’ to say about Psycho, perhaps it’s that the movie’s far-reaching impact has come to obscure the Anthony Perkins performance at the centre – it’s impossible to imagine anyone else as Norman Bates, and the film casting such a long shadow without him.
Cinema has long had a fascination with serial killers. From Fritz Lang’s M, released at the birth of the sound era, to this year’s Longlegs, filmmakers have examined the psychology of compulsive murderers and the society that creates them. It’s easy to understand: exploring the human psyche, even (or especially) the darkest corners of it, is one of the things art is intended to do. But audiences apparently share the fascination, too. And that’s a bit harder to parse.
Other kinds of crime movies provide the vicarious thrill of watching people live outside the law. Movies about serial killers force us to confront humanity at its most frightening. That doesn’t sound like a fun way to spend two hours. But the best serial killer movies don’t just try to shock. In considering the best serial killer movies ever made, we prioritised those that go beyond mere exploitation or voyeurism. The ones that hold a cracked mirror up to the social conditions that would cause one of its citizens to hold human life in such low regard. Some might be categorised as horror, others as noirs or procedurals. All of them will leave you shaken.
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