In Defense Of: “Psycho II” (1983)

Like that aforementioned little voice in our head that wants to see Norman snap, Lila is so desperate to see it happen that she fails to realize she’s only perpetuating a cycle of abuse, becoming just as much “Mother” to Mary as Norman’s own was to him. When Mary pleads with Lila to leave Norman alone, Lila says her daughter is as crazy as he is. She grows increasingly domineering throughout the film, going so far as to violently grab her own daughter and get physical, desperate to prove her point that people don’t change.

Of course, she took that opportunity away from Norman, and when Mary finally tries to do the right thing by being honest and open with Norman, it’s too late. The damage is done. The monster has been reawakened. And though Lila isn’t there to see it – she dies in a pretty shockingly graphic moment late in the film that does, admittedly, border on cruel simply for being a convenient way to write her out – Mary pays the ultimate price for her mother’s abuse, shot and killed by the police, a child becoming the victim of a parent’s influence similar to Norman himself.

All this is to say that Psycho II feels very much like a commentary on our own obsessions, particularly in terms of the slasher genre. No matter what, Psycho II had to feature Norman snap, otherwise audiences would’ve walked away disappointed. As the film presents it, Norman really did have the opportunity to change for the better, but we – like Lila and everyone else who believed otherwise within the narrative itself – took that away from him for the sake of keeping the Psycho franchise alive and rolling.

As I mentioned earlier, Psycho II could’ve taken the easy route and fallen in line with other slasher films of the genre in having Norman killing left and right, but it didn’t, and in that context, it’s an incredibly bold sequel. Granted, it’s not perfect. How Lila is ultimately disposed of feels like a waste, the teen scene feels tonally out of place, and the last minute revelation that Mrs. Spool is Norman’s real mother comes off as tacked on to restore the status quo of the first film – so much so that Psycho III, for all its faults, wisely undoes it – even though it results in the great moment where Norman bashes her head with a shovel and fully returns to his old ways.

But despite its faults, it’s an incredibly patient movie, a slick character study of a man desperately trying to get his life back in a world eager to keep it from him wrapped up in a genuinely engaging mystery. With Psycho being a perfect little film all its own that never necessitated a sequel, Psycho II is far better than it has any right to be, standing as a pretty solid companion piece to Hitchcock’s classic whose merit is earned through its exploration of themes it could’ve easily ignored for the sake of making a throwaway, hollow crowd-pleaser. And while it may not stand completely shoulder to shoulder with its groundbreaking predecessor – or even Bates Motel – it’s still a high point in a franchise full of lows that followed in its wake worth revisiting now and again.