My comment was supposed to be "Feels like a TV show pilot they turned to a movie" and I read one of the comments saying this was intended to become a TV show, now everything makes sense.

The "party" was so weird. "Psycho, but now with literal ghosts!" or was it "guardian angels"? Why did they do this to Bates's memory

This movie is hilarious. The best buddy of Norman Bates inherits his motel, I was waiting for the moment he would go crazy and start killing people. Instead the first 45 minutes orso, is him renovating the place, looking all quirky.

The big reveal of the movie is that the banker pretends he is the mother, so he can build appartments or something and demolish the motel. I may be wrong on some details here cuz I didn't care too much, but it was really unbelievably funny how there was nothing really going on, until more towards the end with a woman who sees a bunch of people who killed themselves.

Really weird movie! Seeing how it was intended to become a TV-show, it makes a lot of sense and really feels like a somewhat okay pilot, with the mandatory introductions of all the characters.

In a way it's too bad this didn't get a full season, to see where it would lead to, but as a standalone movie, with nothing but introductions and laying a foundation for a show, it's hilarious.

In a timeline where Norman Bates is dead, his asylum buddy Alex West inherits the Bates Motel—that's a good idea, right? Nobody ever went psycho in that motel before. It suggests that there might be some supernatural forces at play which is a welcome idea. A decent premise with potencial on paper and the direction it goes is good actually but it's so slow, gets a little boring at times, has some clear writing issues and there's NO KILLS. No Norman either. Alex and Willie are an interesting duo of very distinctly different personalities that mostly do the entire charm of the movie. Some good acting too. On a filmmaking level it has nothing interesting to offer though and it lives up to it's "made for TV movie" tagline. And actually, it feels like a TV pilot for an anthology-type series which might explain a lot. The no kills part really brings it down but judging it for what it is, it's not terrible, just really different.

*Free to watch on YouTube*

_Bates Motel_ is an appallingly bad made-for-TV movie that attempted to revive the _Psycho_ franchise. A young man named Alex West, who befriended Norman Bates while at the same mental institution as a boy, inherits the Bates Motel after Norman’s death and attempts to renovate and reopen it. Not only doesn’t it follow the continuity of _Psycho II_ & _III_, it doesn’t even follow the continuity of the original film. And the sentimental, maudlin tone is beyond bizarre, with Alex reverently carrying around Norman’s ashes (that’s Norman Bates, the serial killer) and talking about making him proud. And the plot takes some really strange turns, and breaks the fourth wall at the end as Alex turns to the camera and telling the audience what to expect with future visits to the Bates Model. A _Psycho_ spin-off in name only, _Bates Motel_ is a hot mess that has no understanding of what the films were about.