Apple TV slammed for “ruining” the most famous horror movie ever made

Fans of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho have slammed the Apple TV app for prioritizing an advertisement at the worst possible moment.

Alfred Hitchcock’s groundbreaking horror movie Psycho, originally released in 1960, is beloved for myriad reasons. For one, it helped American cinema slash through certain notions about violence and morality.

Hitchcock further pushed the envelope in terms of subverting story and character expectations. But, for many, Psycho especially succeeds because of its final few minutes, which reveal a plot twist unlike in the era in which it was released.

Those who’ve watched the film through Apple TV can’t help but feel frustrated, thanks in no small part to the app’s poorly-timed advertisements.

Twitter/X user VHSdude shared footage of the last 30 seconds of Psycho as it appears on Apple TV. The user wrote, “Physical media will always be better than this abomination!!!”

As the doctor’s monologue plays, the movie screen is minimized to instead center an advertisement for the Big Bang Theory’s final season. Unsurprisingly, fans have bashed Apple TV for the bizarre transition.

One response reads, “crying isn’t that one if not the most important shot of psycho and it got minimized to a little box to the side like a youtube reactor.”

Another person joined the chorus to add, “I’ve never seen a jump scare outside of the movie ruin a movie before.”

Someone else shared their own frustrations with Apple TV, lamenting how the app will autoplay shows like Bad Monkey while they’re trying to sit and think on the “weighty and complex directorial decisions” behind a freshly-finished Pachinko episode.

Discussions of this nature have, of course, reignited calls for streaming services to offer an option to disable transitions to ads or autoplay movies/TV episodes.

Netflix already has such a feature that subscribers can access in their profile settings. Apple TV viewers can only hope it, too, will adopt a similar feature before long.