Psycho IV: The BeginningMovies like Psycho IV: The Beginning
- Key Features:
- Psychological horror, Prequel, Mental illness, Radio, Origin story, Trauma, Unstable protagonist, Family secrets, Violence-moderate, Mystery, Character study, Obsession, Paranoia, Legacy sequel
- Tone:
- serious, suspense-driven, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Horror fans, Psychological thriller enthusiasts, Cult film aficionados, Franchise fans
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Dread → Unease
Psycho IV: The Beginning

When he hears talk radio host Fran Ambrose discussing the topic of matricide, Norman calls in under a false name to tell his story.
Psycho IV: The Beginning
Norman Bates is declared sane and released from the facility in which he was being held, despite the complaints of Lila Loomis, sister of his most famous victim. Is he really cured, or will he kill again?

When Maureen Coyle, a suicidal nun who resembles Norman's former victim, Marion Crane, arrives at the motel, all bets are off and "Mother" is less than happy.

A mentally disturbed man who roomed with the late Norman Bates at a psychiatric facility inherits the infamous Bates Motel after his death and attempts to fix it up as a respectable business.

A young female embezzler arrives at the Bates Motel, which has terrible secrets of its own.

When larcenous real estate clerk Marion Crane goes on the lam with a wad of cash and hopes of starting a new life, she ends up at the notorious Bates Motel, where manager Norman Bates cares for his housebound mother.

Radio talk show therapist Sonny Blake moves back to her childhood home on seemingly idyllic Rosewood Lane after her alcoholic father dies. But upon arrival in the old neighborhood, Sonny discovers her neighbors are terrified of the local paperboy. She thinks this is ridiculous, until she encounters the boy himself. It turns out that he is a cunning and dangerous sociopath, one who may have gruesomely killed her father - and others.

Just when you thought it was safe to sleep, Freddy Krueger returns in this sixth installment of the Nightmare on Elm Street films, as psychologist Maggie Burroughs, tormented by recurring nightmares, meets a patient with the same horrific dreams. Their quest for answers leads to a certain house on Elm Street -- where the nightmares become reality.

The early years of young Michael Myers and the events leading up to his fateful Halloween night murder rampage in the quiet town of Haddonfield, Illinois.

Ten years after the original Woodsboro murders, one of the survivors returns home to promote their new book about surviving trauma, only for a new Ghostface killer to emerge, targeting a new group of teens.

Rod leads a radio show dedicated to horror. Until suddenly the announcer begins to receive strange calls from a child who desperately asks for help. At first thinks that it is a bad joke until he discovers that this is not the case. These calls hide a dark secret…

Despite Jigsaw's death, and in order to save the lives of two of his colleagues, Lieutenant Rigg is forced to take part in a new game, which promises to test him to the limit.

Unaware that it's plagued by a host of supernatural phenomena, a mother and her daughter, still reeling from a car crash which claimed the life of Roger Cobb, move into the hold family homestead to start a new life.

When Dr. Pieter Fales' patients start receiving ominous letters and getting murdered by an unknown black-clad assailant, he and his daughter both come under suspicion.

An author who was sent to the town Drakho, because of a nervous breakdown, gets wound up in a mystery revolving around demons and werewolves. She starts seeing ghosts and dismisses them as her own imagination, but when they turn out to be real she becomes suspicious of the odd town and of its past.

Years before Father Merrin helped save Regan MacNeil’s soul, he first encounters the demon Pazuzu in East Africa.

Homicidal maniac Jason returns from the grave to cause more bloody mayhem. Young Tommy may have escaped from Crystal Lake, but he’s still haunted by the gruesome events that happened there. When gory murders start happening at the secluded halfway house for troubled teens where he now lives, it seems like his nightmarish nemesis, Jason, is back for more sadistic slaughters.

Chrissie and her friends set out on a road trip for a final fling before one is shipped off to Vietnam. Along the way, bikers harass the foursome and cause an accident that throws Chrissie from the vehicle. The lawman who arrives on the scene kills one of the bikers and brings Chrissie's friends to the Hewitt homestead, where young Leatherface is learning the tools of terror.

Troubled psychotherapist Peter Bowers is suffering from nightmares and eerie visions. When he uncovers a horrifying secret that all of his patients share, he is put on a course that takes him back to the small hometown he fled years ago. There he confronts his demons and unravels a mystery 20 years in the making.

Madison is paralyzed by shocking visions of grisly murders, and her torment worsens as she discovers that these waking dreams are in fact terrifying realities with a mysterious tie to her past.

An Oxford Medical School graduate takes a position at a mental institution and soon becomes obsessed with a female mental patient, but he has no idea of a recent and horrifying staffing change.

In 1967 Los Angeles, a widowed mother and her two daughters add a new stunt to bolster their séance scam business and unwittingly invite authentic evil into their home. When the youngest daughter is overtaken by the merciless spirit, this small family confronts unthinkable fears to save her and send her possessor back to the other side.

A young psychiatrist applies for a job at a mental asylum and must pass a test by interviewing four patients. He must figure out which of the patients, is in fact, the doctor that he would be replacing if hired.

A young nurse is kidnapped by a group of violent teens who escape from a mental hospital and take her on the road trip from hell. Pursued by an equally deranged lawman out for revenge, one of the teens is destined for tragedy and horrors that will destroy his mind, moulding him into a monster named Leatherface.

A group of friends take refuge in a deserted sanatorium after they are left stranded in a snowstorm. Later, the place becomes a death trap when man-eating cannibals surround them.

After the death of her daughter, wealthy housewife Julia Lofting abruptly leaves her husband and moves into an old Victorian home in London to re-start her life. All seems well until she is haunted by the sadness of losing her own child and the ghosts of other children.

A psychotic man, troubled by his childhood abuse, kills and mutilates young women and local models on the streets of New York City.

The true story of Edward Gein, the farmer whose horrific crimes inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs. This is the first film to Gein's tormented upbringing, his adored but domineering mother, and the 1957 arrest uncovered the most bizarre series of murders America has ever seen

As he helps a young artist with her upcoming exhibition, the owner of a mannequin shop's deadly, suppressed desires come to the surface.

In a shadowy world stitched from nightmares, a young woman's harrowing journey in a seedy hotel unveils her traumatic past. Haunted by violence and stalked through desolate streets, her psyche unravels as she confronts an abusive husband and unsettling memories.

Following the latest Ghostface killings, the four survivors leave Woodsboro behind and start a fresh chapter.

Blonde Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman's identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.

Following his great success with "North by Northwest," director Alfred Hitchcock makes a daring choice for his next project: an adaptation of Robert Bloch's novel "Psycho." When the studio refuses to back the picture, Hitchcock decides to pay for it himself in exchange for a percentage of the profits. His wife, Alma Reville, has serious reservations about the film but supports him nonetheless. Still, the production strains the couple's marriage.

Sam Bowden witnesses a rape committed by Max Cady and testifies against him. When released after 8 years in prison, Cady begins stalking Bowden and his family but is always clever enough not to violate the law.

The pregnant Alice finds Freddy Krueger striking through the sleeping mind of her unborn child, hoping to be reborn into the real world.

When four bodies are discovered among the industrial decay and urban grime of New York City, brash young detective Mike Reilly teams with ambitious Department of Health researcher Terry Huston to uncover the cause behind their violent and inexplicable deaths. The only common factor shared by the victims? Each died exactly 48 hours after logging onto a website called feardotcom.

A picture-perfect family is torn apart after Tyler finds a cache of disturbing images in his father's possession. He begins to suspect that the man he trusts most in the world may be responsible for the murder of 13 women ten years prior.

A young woman is invited by her girlfriend, who lives in an English country mansion, to stay there with her. The estate, however, isn't quite what it seems--and neither is the friend who issued the invitation.

Frederick Fitzell is living his best life—until he starts having horrific visions of Cindy, a girl who vanished in high school. After reaching out to old friends with whom he used to take a mystery drug called Mercury, Fredrick realizes the only way to stop the visions lies deep within his own memories, so he embarks on a terrifying mental odyssey to learn the truth.

In 1889, seventeen men die under mysterious circumstances, and spooked by recent events, the miners who populate the town leave in droves until there's nothing left but a shell of a community.

Arriving in Chicago, Henry moves in with ex-con acquaintance Otis and starts schooling him in the ways of the serial killer.

After lying in a coma for a year, Michael Myers awakens and stalks his way back to his small hometown in Illinois, intent on killing his niece, Jamie, who has been confined to a mental institution since his last attempt to slay her.

A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.

Dr. Tremayne is an enigmatic psychiatrist running an asylum that houses four very special cases. Visited by his colleague Nicholas, Tremayne explains his amazing and controversial theories as to why each of the four patients went mad.

In the late 18th century, two newlyweds move into the stately mansion of the Fengriffen family. The young bride is victim of terrifying visions and apparitions, threatening her very sanity. A London psychiatrist comes to her help and uncovers the terrible secret that haunts the estate.

Sue Ann is a loner who keeps to herself in her quiet Ohio town. One day, she is asked by Maggie, a new teenager in town, to buy some booze for her and her friends, and Sue Ann sees the chance to make some unsuspecting, if younger, friends of her own.

When a young boy contracts a mysterious illness, his mother must decide how far she will go to protect him from terrifying forces in her past.

Relationship Therapist, Dr. Jill Peterman, had the highest-rated call-in radio show when her world was pulled out from under her following the on-air suicide of a female caller named Alexis. Shaken to her core, Dr. Jill walked away from her show vowing she would never go back. That is until Stuart, the station's General Manager, pleads with her to reboot the show in an effort to bring followers back to the station. Still haunted by what happened, Jill agrees to help her friend out and believes this will be the perfect remedy to put her year-long anxiety to rest. As Jill starts to settle back into her show, mysterious call-ins start happening forcing her to believe there could be a copy-cat out there. What Jill begins to uncover is a web of secrets and lies stemming from the mysterious voice she has come to know as Alexis.

A young student is haunted by recurring dreams of her mother murdering her father, but her nightmare is just beginning as she tries to prove to her loved ones that she is not insane.

A man named Seligman finds a fainted wounded woman in an alley and he brings her home. She tells him that her name is Joe and that she is nymphomaniac. Joe tells her life and sexual experiences with hundreds of men since she was a young teenager while Seligman tells about his hobbies, such as fly fishing, reading about Fibonacci numbers or listening to organ music.

After setting her serial killer boyfriend on fire, a paranoid delusional woman gets a job at an all-night gas station. The isolation triggers her anxiety and hallucinations, with devastatingly gory results.

A young woman is terrorized by her former fiance's demented mother who blames her for her son's death. Also known as Die! Die! My Darling!

A couple begins to experience terrifying supernatural occurrences involving a vintage doll shortly after their home is invaded by satanic cultists.

An examination of Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud's career when he began to treat patients diagnosed with hysteria, using the radical technique of hypnosis.

A writer/radio advice show host fails to heed his own advice as he stalks his ex-girlfriend and then becomes involved with an actress friend of hers.

Seemingly mild-mannered Henry Morrison has just murdered his entire family. After adopting a new identity and skipping town, he begins building a new relationship with a widow and her teenage daughter. However, he soon begins struggling to hide his true identity and maintain a grip on reality.

While being interrogated by a police psychiatrist, the near-catatonic Tabitha tries to explain why she and two of her childhood friends are being hunted by a serial killer. The truth that's dying to come out weaves together three tragic secrets from their past. Two of the girls' boyfriends become unwitting targets in their deadly game.

After an older lady hangs herself in a church, a new psychiatrist discovers she was obsessed with the disappearance of his eight-year-old son, who vanished three years earlier. Meanwhile, three city dwellers are restoring a house when they realize it is haunted.

With the help of his girlfriend Cathy and Dr. Fong, a psychiatrist, ambitious journalist Johnny Barrett poses as a madman in order to be admitted to a mental institution where a bloody murder has been committed.

A teenage boy is haunted in his dreams by deceased child murderer Freddy Krueger, who is out to possess him in order to continue his reign of terror in the real world.

When her mother is killed in a mysterious house fire, rebellious teen Debbie Strand is sent to live with her grandmother, where she becomes even more unhinged. She develops an intense crush on her hunky creative writing teacher, Peter Rinaldi, but her numerous attempts at seduction end in failure. Soon Peter's friends start turning up dead, and he fears that his fiancée, Marilyn, may be Debbie's next victim.

Several years after the tragic death of their little girl, a doll maker and his wife welcome a nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home, soon becoming the target of the doll maker's possessed creation—Annabelle.

A killer is released from prison and breaks into a remote home to kill a woman, her handicapped son and her pretty daughter.

Five dangerous patients, suffering from extreme phobias at a government testing facility, are put to the ultimate test under the supervision of a crazed doctor and his quest to weaponize fear.

Driven by tragedy, billionaire Bruce Wayne dedicates his life to uncovering and defeating the corruption that plagues his home, Gotham City. Unable to work within the system, he instead creates a new identity, a symbol of fear for the criminal underworld - The Batman.

Young babysitter Amanda arrives at the Lloyd residence to spend the evening looking after their young son. Soon after the Lloyds leave, a series of frightening occurrences in the gloomy old house have Amanda's nerves on edge. The real terror begins, however, when the child's biological father appears after recently escaping from a nearby mental institution.

In 1957, Dorothy and Edmund Yates were committed to an institution for the criminally insane, she for acts of murder and cannibalism and he for covering up her crimes. Fifteen years later, they are pronounced fit for society and released. However, in Dorothy's case the doctors may have jumped the gun a bit. Edmund and eldest daughter, Jackie, try to discover just how far Mother's bloodlust has taken her. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Debbie begins to explore the crazy roots of her family tree as fully as possible.

Yale University, 1961. Stanley Milgram designs a psychology experiment that still resonates to this day, in which people think they’re delivering painful electric shocks to an affable stranger strapped into a chair in another room. Despite his pleads for mercy, the majority of subjects don’t stop the experiment, administering what they think is a near-fatal electric shock, simply because they’ve been told to do so. With Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial airing in living rooms across America, Milgram strikes a nerve in popular culture and the scientific community with his exploration into people’s tendency to comply with authority. Celebrated in some circles, he is also accused of being a deceptive, manipulative monster, but his wife Sasha stands by him through it all.

Dr. Marcus, a renowned psychiatrist, has selected 6 severe mentally ill and dangerous patients from the Spring Valley Mental Hospital to interview as part of research for his new book. As Dr. Marcus interviews each patient, one by one the horrors they have committed begin to unfold. However, Dr. Marcus soon learns that there is one patient who ties them all together - Patient Seven.

In a small Midwestern town, a troubled teen with homicidal tendencies must hunt down and destroy a supernatural killer while keeping his own inner demons at bay.

Every culture has one – the horrible monster fueling young children's nightmares. But for Tim, the Boogeyman still lives in his memories as a creature that devoured his father 16 years ago. Is the Boogeyman real, or did Tim make it up to explain why his father abandoned his family?

The 19 years old Thomas wakes up in a hospital after three years in a coma. He doesn't remember anything. The psychologist Anna tells him that his family has been murdered and that he is the only survivor of the massacre while his sister Laura is still missing.

Eight year old Peter is plagued by a mysterious, constant tapping from inside his bedroom wall—one that his parents insist is all in his imagination. As Peter's fear intensifies, he believes that his parents could be hiding a terrible, dangerous secret and questions their trustworthiness.

"Stepfather" Jerry Blake escapes an insane asylum and winds up in another town, this time impersonating a marriage counselor. With a future wife and new stepson who love him, Blake eliminates anyone who stands in his way to building the perfect family.

When a gloomy, God-fearing island community is rocked by the assault of an infant, a psychiatrist is called in to examine Dorothy Mills, the teenager accused of the crime. Despite the villagers' hostility to her inquiry, she soon comes to suspect that Dorothy suffers from multiple personality disorder...

When Susan was a little girl, she rejected the Valentine of a lovestruck classmate. Decades later, she’s come to the hospital for a routine medical examination, and finds herself trapped in a bizarre nightmare, made all the worse as her vengeful childhood valentine, disguised among the hospital staff, begins murdering everyone in his path as a means of proving his undying ‘romantic’ obsession…

A shy, lonely film buff embarks on a killing spree against those who browbeat and betray him, all the while stalking his idol, a Marilyn Monroe lookalike.

While on a class observation trip at a local mental hospital, young psychology major Abby Jones, has a chilling encounter with high-risk patient, Harmon Porter. She returns home for an evening of normal study with her two roommates unaware of the darkness she’s awakened within him.

A young couple, Rosemary and Guy, moves into an infamous New York apartment building, known by frightening legends and mysterious events, with the purpose of starting a family.

Fred arrives at the doorstep of his beautiful young mistress Velvet after four years apart, claiming to have finally left his wife. But when she rejects his attempts to rekindle their romance, his persistence evolves into obsession — and a dark history between the former lovers comes into focus.

The sadistic tale of a lonely, mentally handicapped boy who befriends his reflection in an antique mirror. This demonic creature orders him to go on a murderous rampage to kill the people he loves most.

During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.

Teenagers in a small town are dropping like flies, apparently in the grip of mass hysteria causing their suicides. A cop's daughter, Nancy Thompson, traces the cause to child molester Fred Krueger, who was burned alive by angry parents many years before. Krueger has now come back in the dreams of his killers' children, claiming their lives as his revenge. Nancy and her boyfriend, Glen, must devise a plan to lure the monster out of the realm of nightmares and into the real world...

A group of unlikely companions receive a radio call leading to a deserted house with a grisly past.

A woman's carefully constructed life is upended when an unwelcome shadow from her past returns, forcing her to confront the monster she's evaded for two decades.

A young couple purchase their new home to start a life together, only to find out the elderly couple next door have other plans for them.

A man who has been having visions of an impending danger begins an affair with a woman who may lead him to his doom.

Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is a pillar of the community in his small west Texas town, patient and apparently thoughtful. Some people think he is a little slow and maybe boring, but that is the worst they say about him. But then nobody knows about what Lou calls his "sickness": He is a brilliant, but disturbed sociopathic sadist.

The uncle of an executed murderess relates four stories of his hometown, Oldfield, to a reporter. In the first, an elderly man pursues a romance with a younger woman, even to the grave and beyond. In the second, a wounded man on the run from creditors is rescued by a backwoods hermit who holds the secret to eternal life. In the third, a glass-eating carny pays the ultimate price for looking for love on the outside. And in the fourth, a group of Civil War soldiers are held captive by a household of orphans with strange intentions for them.

A teenager pretends to be dying from cancer as a way to cope with the realities of his daily existence and his father's terminal illness.

Laurie Strode comes to her final confrontation with Michael Myers, the masked figure who has haunted her since she narrowly escaped his killing spree on Halloween night four decades ago.

A deranged female serial killer stalks seven young people whom phone a radio call-in show to discuss their darkest fears and a night-long game of cat-and-mouse is put into motion by the darkly sinister-looking murderess.

A serial killer whose mother was a prostitute starts killing streetwalkers as a way of paying back his mother for her abuse.

A young man, convinced he's a vampire, goes to live with his elderly and hostile cousin in a small Pennsylvanian town, where he tries to suppress his bloodlust.

Freddy Krueger returns once again to terrorize the dreams of the remaining Dream Warriors, as well as those of a young woman who may be able to defeat him for good.

After years of being browbeaten and walked on, a man wakes one day wearing an expressionless mask, fitted with a personality that enables him to take revenge.

The most famous murder scene in movie history comprises 78 camera settings and 52 cuts: the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. 78/52 tells the story of the man behind the curtain and his greatest obsession.



