Being such an old film and special effects having moved on soooo much from when this was released I wasn’t really expecting to be scared at all by Psycho but whilst things like the shower scene don’t have the same shock factor as they did in 1960, Hitchcock shows why he is a master at building up tension here. From the minute Marion arrives at the motel to the minute the film ends, you’re on edge. Partly due to Bernard Herman’s score as well but all the little things like the stuffed animals, Norman talking about his mad mother build and build the atmosphere to allow the horror in this film to be timeless. Apparently Hitchcock once said “make your audience suffer as much as possible” and this applies here in the best way possible. And that’s without talking about the clear and obvious influence this has had on the rest of horror cinema. I’m not a big horror film expert but you can definitely see the influence of this in both slashers and more psychological horror films like the shining. It’s such a great template for horror and suspense films and the twist at the end has to be one of the best (maybe the best) of all time. Only issue is the explanation from the psychiatrist- a bit of it is necessary but it didn’t need to be that long- there’s no way the audience is dumb enough to need all that.