This movie is underrated as hell

You ever explain to that person 1985 was the exact year movies started to go downhill?

# 24 Horror Films, # 407 Overall Dracula 1931 Browning, Tod USA BD
# 25 Horror Films, # 408 Overall Dr. Mabuse - The Gambler 1922 Lang, Fritz Germany BD
# 26 Horror Films, # 493 Overall Young Frankenstein 1974 Brooks, Mel USA BDS
# 27 Horror Films, # 511 Overall What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962 Aldrich, Robert USA BD
# 28 Horror Films, # 523 Overall Cat People 1942 Tourneur, Jacques USA BD
# 29 Horror Films, # 530 Overall The Phantom of the Opera 1925 Julian, Rupert / Laemmle, Ernst / Sedgwick, Edward USA BD
# 30 Horror Films, # 561 Overall Suspiria 1977 Argento, Dario Italy / West Germany BD
# 31 Horror Films, # 566 Overall Aliens 1986 Cameron, James USA / UK BDS
# 32 Horror Films, # 614 Overall Freaks 1932 Browning, Tod USA D
# 33 Horror Films, # 619 Overall Dead of Night 1945 Cavalcanti, Alberto / Crichton, Charles / Dearden, Basil / Hamer, Robert UK Y
# 34 Horror Films, # 622 Overall Vampyr 1932 Dreyer, Carl Theodor France / Germany BD
# 35 Horror Films, # 636 Overall Eraserhead 1977 Lynch, David USA BDS
# 36 Horror Films, # 666 Overall Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1931 Mamoulian, Rouben USA D
# 37 Horror Films, # 681 Overall The Vanishing 1988 Sluizer, George Netherlands / France BD
# 38 Horror Films, # 697 Overall Dawn of the Dead 1978 Romero, George A. Italy / USA BD
# 39 Horror Films, # 735 Overall The Innocents 1961 Clayton, Jack UK BD
# 40 Horror Films, # 739 Overall Eyes Without a Face 1960 Franju, Georges France / Italy BD
# 41 Horror Films, # 746 Overall The Wicker Man 1973 Hardy, Robin UK D
# 42 Horror Films, # 752 Overall The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974 Hooper, Tobe USA BD
# 43 Horror Films, # 759 Overall Poltergeist 1982 Hooper, Tobe / Spielberg, Steven USA BDS
# 44 Horror Films, # 767 Overall I Walked with a Zombie 1943 Tourneur, Jacques USA D
# 45 Horror Films, # 798 Overall Heavenly Creatures 1994 Jackson, Peter UK / Germany / New Zealand BD
# 46 Horror Films, # 802 Overall Kwaidan 1964 Kobayashi, Masaki Japan BD

In sum, according to films101, Psycho is the most critically respected horror-film by *far*. It's a top 10 all-timer and no other horror makes it into the top 50 overall.

Now, the whole films101 project has its limits: critical consensus indexes effectively overall value where 'importance to the history of movies' is a major component of that value judgement. That sort of attempted trans-historical value-judgement fits poorly with popular genre ranking ideas such as 'Scariest movies', i.e., for typical viewers right now. E.g.,
# 112 Horror Films, # 1798 Overall The Thing 1982 Carpenter, John USA BDS
won't be acceptable to a lot of people because it's a top-20 scariest right now by a lot of people's lights. Ditto Texas Chainsaw.

I don't think a 4 star rated film with Oscar noms is underrated.
However, I remember the film-critics' books from the 1960's where PSYCHO received 3*, at best. (and The Birds received 2 1/2*)
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Yes, I think that was a time when neither Hitchcock nor horror were much taken seriously in film guides. They needed time to become classics...and I think The Birds was rather "bootstrapped up" WITH Psycho...given that the latter film ended up a bigger hit and demonstrably a more profound movie.

Those star rankings always feel sorta "right" nowadays, don't they? In Hitchcock, Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, NXNW...all get four stars. Something like To Catch a Thief gets three. And even the "worst" of Hitchcock usually bottoms out at two stars (Torn Curtain, Topaz)...though I have seen both of those films with three stars in recent years. They deserve three. Hitchcock brought things to both movies that most movies don't have.

My late breaking favorite, Frenzy, seems to sometimes get four, sometimes three, sometimes the very helpful "three and a half stars"(better than three, almost there...to a four.)

Psycho comes in at #6.
#5 Halloween
#4 The Exorcist
#3 Rosemary's Baby
#2 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
#1 The Shining

Poor ol' Psycho. Starting to look and feel too old and tame to compete. Well, I think it is a better film than those five above it, if not necessarily as scary as some of them.

Halloween lacks the cinematics, characters, performances and dialogue of Psycho. Ditto Chainsaw massacre. Rosemary's Baby lacks the set-pieces and shock. The Exorcist -- probably the closest one there in terms of MAINSTREAM popularity....just felt rather dull and gross to me on release(with child abuse on screen too disturbingly "real.") No real jump shocks in that one, either.

Which leaves The Shining. Something about it felt disappointing on release -- as if Kubrick, King and Nicholson should have come up with something more "classic" and scary. I also find the finale (Jack running around desperately in the snowy maze) to be rather "anti-climactic," nothing on par with the fruit cellar shocker that climaxes Psycho. And -- process shot or no process shot -- Martin Balsam getting it on the stairs was far more cinematic and dazzling than Scatman Crothers getting it in the lobby.

The LA Times critic wrote of The Shining in 1980: "It is too much of an art film for horror movie buffs, and too much of a horror movie for art film buffs."

But I like The Shining on its own, arty, fantastic yet realistic terms. The whole scene where Jack stalks his wife all the way across the floor and all the way up the stairs is a model of misogynistic horror-hilarity ("I'm not gonna hurtcha, Wendy...I'm just gonna bash your brains in") that ends with the wimpy woman triumphant("Gimme the bat, Wendy!" and she DOES). The superslow, oh-so-precise dialogue between Jack and the Butler in the bathroom ("I ...corrected them.") -- masterly. Ditto Jack's wacky bar banter with the bartender, Lloyd. How Lloyd and the Butler are PLAYED by their respective actors is the stuff of magnetic screen work.

Yes, The Shining has grown on me over the years. And I'm a big Jack Nicholson fan, and I think his hammery was just right for this movie. But it still can't beat Psycho for power and precision.

PS. I also give The Shining points for having the "second best setting for horror" after Psycho. The motel and Gothic house combo in Psycho will never be beaten, but the empty hundred-plus-room hotel in the snowed out middle of nowhere in The Shining is a damn good second place.