Norman Bates is considered sane after over twenty years of therapy and benefits from conditional liberation. He is offered a job as a cook in a restaurant and his house is given back to him. He quickly fires the person who turned his motel into a brothel and starts renovating.

Mary, a waitress that has nowhere to sleep, accepts Norman’s invitation She had been warned of his mental problems but it didn’t seem to trouble her.

One day, at the restaurant, a note left on one of the orders troubles Norman. He believes he recognizes his mother’s handwriting and she orders him to kill Mary. His stability is deeply disturbed. From this moment on, even though he thought he was completely cured, his world capsizes and everything small detail makes him suspect his mother has returned. His psychiatrist is more worried about Lila Loomis, a women who fights his liberation, than Norman’s psychotic state. He is persuaded that she is trying to break him in order to show the world that he deserves to be in a mental institution for the rest of his life.

Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, certainly had all the charms it needed when it was released. Psycho 2 came out in a new era where the public was waiting impatiently for the next slasher flick and, curiously, it still managed to succeed. In fact, Psycho 2 is one of the best direct follow-ups in horror movie history.

One inevitable error that can be perceived is that while Psycho remained concise, Psycho 2 extrapolated too many details, in my opinion. The number of murders isn’t a problem in itself; the gratuitous aftertaste is. Up to two or three scenes of violence could have been suppressed or at least reduced. Furthermore, we analyze Norman Bates so much that he loses his mystery. We no longer fear him; we sympathize with him. Regardless, we definitely learn more about him.

Psycho remarkably succeeded in allowing a character to act in a way that he isn’t totally logical and this great feature was re-used in the sequel. Usually this is a cliché in horror films but in Psycho Norman Bates represents two distinct characters. Now, in Psycho 2, neither the people in his entourage that know about his situation nor himself act in a predictive manner. All of this mixed in with the Lila Loomis conspiracy pushes Psycho 2 into a higher rank, at the level of psychological thrillers.

Hitchcock’s distinctive camera angles and movements are perfectly imitated, the dialogue is as addictive, Norman Bates evolves in complexity and familiarity. The environment was flawlessly rebuilt. Anthony Perkins is as credible and Meg Tilly does a great job playing a character that constantly helps us understand the breadth of Norman’s madness.