By ANDY GILCHRIST
Staff Writer
Prequels are nearly impossible to pull off. The audience already knows who the characters are and what they are doing at the beginning of the story, so why tell us how they got there? If viewers already know how the origin story will end, why tell it at all? Numerous franchises have tried to excite viewers with a prelude to the main tale, only to fail miserably at telling a story as good as the first. Such futile beginning stories include the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, and even last summer’s Prometheus.
But in the sea of failed prequels, a few gems have emerged through the years. Films such as X-Men: First Class and Rise of the Planet of the Apes come to mind when considering stories that live up to the original. The A&E Network has added to the list of prequels with their newest television series Bates Motel, a prequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s legendary horror film Psycho. Though not perfect, the show is surprisingly entertaining and has the parts necessary to make it an enduring series that lives up to the legacy of its predecessor.
The series opens with a teenage Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) discovering the bloody corpse of his father in the garage. He rushes in tears to tell his mother, Norma (Vera Farmiga), who is oddly calm upon learning the news. Six months later, the two have moved to the small Oregon town of White Pine Bay, where Norma has purchased a foreclosed motel in the hope of starting over. Though Norman wants to establish himself in this new world with his new friends, his mother wants him to stay home with her, and it’s clear that there are some serious Oedipal vibes going on in the house. Meanwhile, Norman’s half-brother Dylan (Max Theriot), who has a very strained relationship with Norma, tries to push himself back into their lives, only showing up in the pilot briefly when he calls Norma asking for money.
Norman and Norma are soon visited by the previous owner of the motel, who acts viciously and cryptically towards them. One night, this man breaks into the house and begins to rape Norma, with Norman returning home just in time to save his mother, who kills the intruder in a fit of rage. While disposing of the man’s body and clearing all evidence of their crime, Norman finds a journal beneath a carpet in one of the motel rooms, which contains illustrations of people being gagged and drugged, and the final scene reveals that this is actually happening somewhere in the town. As Norman and Norma prepare to begin their lives at the Bates Motel, it’s clear that what they have already experienced is only scratching the surface of the bizarre goings-on of their new home.
The problem of a prequel is that the audience already knows how it will end, having seen the characters in the original story, making the prequel redundant. The producers of Bates Motel, one of whom previously served as the showrunner for the mind-bending epic Lost, have confronted this problem by asking the audience a simple question: What if Norman Bates and his mother, two of the creepiest characters in film history, are not the weirdest parts of their story?
The producers instead shine the spotlight on their new habitat, the town itself, making the show more David Lynch than Alfred Hitchcock. Before his death, the previous owner says that the Bates’ have no idea of how the town works and that everything there is connected. Two police officers show up as they are attempting to dispose of the body and act very suspiciously. Nearly every student at Norman’s new school instantly take a liking to him and so far there are no typical bully characters to pick on the new kid. And the final scene, of a person chained to the floor and being sedated with drugs, hints at very sinister happenings beneath the veil of happiness the town exerts.
The performances, meanwhile, are spot on. Highmore is perfect as the awkward Norman, who is eternally obedient to his mom, whom he always calls “mother,” yet desperately seeks rebellion and freedom from her domineering gaze. Farmiga is also brilliant as the manipulative Norma, who easily twists Norman around her finger and keeps him close to home, figuratively and literally. She simultaneously plays a woman desperate to escape her past, but who is also oddly cool and knowledgeable when it comes to handling dead bodies. The strength of these two actors could carry the show by itself.
Despite taking an offbeat approach and setting the show in the present day, respect is paid to the original. Even though the show features a fair amount of blood, with one particularly gruesome killing shown in full detail in the pilot, the show relies more on terror and suspense than horror. The sets for the Bates Motel, the Psycho house, and the property they sit on has been painstakingly recreated and look exactly like they did in Hitchcock’s original. Allusions to the film, such as the dead man’s corpse being kept in the shower, are prevalent and will perhaps someday serve as inspiration for the future mass murderer Norman.
A&E’s newest series is Bates Motel, a prequel to the classic horror film Psycho. Though it updates the characters, settings, and material for a modern audience, the show absolutely proves that goods prequel stories are possible by respecting what came before while still telling an entertaining story. If the show can keep up the brilliance of its opening episode, Bates Motel could run for several years and become a classic in its own right.
