The shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is one of the most influential and terrifying sequences in film history.
The way in which Hitchcock alternates the speed of the camera shots, as well as how he intersperses elongated moments of silence and stillness with the action, is what captures the brilliance of this scene. Even when the murder is not directly occurring, the viewer remains in a perpetual state of shock and horror. This is evident as the camera at one point meticulously tracks the bloody water washing slowly down the drain, and then fades out to a close-up of the woman’s eye, dead yet eerily alive. Moreover, Hitchcock, escpecially in this scenario, capitalizes on the voyeuristic nature of disturbed individuals, a concept rarely delineated in film up until that time. However, following Psycho, this constituted a major element in the films made by notable directors such as Brian De Palma.