Bates Motel sort of does for Hitchcock and Bloch's Psycho what Rob Zombie's Halloween did for John Carpenter's original: it puts the killer into a crappy home environment to try and "explain" why he's a murderous nutjob. Precisely what made both pieces of media scary is that seemingly normal people in seemingly idyllic settings can be as monstrous as the traditional vampire or werewolf. It sort of loses some of its impact when everyone in the entire town has their own drug cartel or sex trafficking ring. In Psycho, it's like "How could a seemingly normal young man be so insane?" In Bates Motel it's like "No F***ing Shit, of course this kid's gonna have problems!"
It might be good as modern, morally ambiguous cable TV drama(because that's all the rage nowadays), but as a pseudo-prequel to Psycho, it fails to understand the premise.
Series Completely Missing The Point: The Series
Bates Motel sort of does for Hitchcock and Bloch's Psycho what Rob Zombie's Halloween did for John Carpenter's original: it puts the killer into a crappy home environment to try and "explain" why he's a murderous nutjob. Precisely what made both pieces of media scary is that seemingly normal people in seemingly idyllic settings can be as monstrous as the traditional vampire or werewolf. It sort of loses some of its impact when everyone in the entire town has their own drug cartel or sex trafficking ring. In Psycho, it's like "How could a seemingly normal young man be so insane?" In Bates Motel it's like "No F***ing Shit, of course this kid's gonna have problems!"
It might be good as modern, morally ambiguous cable TV drama(because that's all the rage nowadays), but as a pseudo-prequel to Psycho, it fails to understand the premise.