Tone-wise, this retelling of Alfred Hitchcock’s life during the making of his masterpiece Psycho may be a little off (Is it a love story? Psycho-thriller? Satire?), but our sprightly two leads—the ever reliable Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock and Helen Mirren as his wife and collaborator Alma Reville—manage to carry the film throughout with their funny, spot-on performances.

Based on author Stephen Rebello’s 1990 bestseller Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho with a screenplay by Black Swan’s John J. McLaughlin, the film’s narrative about a tortured Hitchcock is nonetheless entertaining. The year is 1959, and Hitchcock has just released the massive hit North by Northwest. But something’s troubling the guy; apart from his constant fixations on his blonde female leads (he checks out their photos almost every night), Hitchcock is running out of inspiration for his next movie. He decides to make a film about mass murderer Ed Gein, yet his determination to make the flick is greeted with derision—Paramount won’t produce it and the censors are constantly on his back. But perhaps most importantly, Psycho is greeted with cool skepticism from Alma, his closest collaborator, who decides to work on a writing project with old friend Whitfield (Danny Huston), who may harbor romantic feelings for her. An increasingly disturbed Hitchcock decides to throw caution to the wind; he mortgages his villa to get financing and proceeds with the film. Soon enough, he gets even more distracted and has even more “conversations” with his imaginary friend Gein (Michael Wincott) (a plot device that is completely unnecessary) as he suffers through the set and a potentially disastrous film project.

Although Psycho did turn out to be one of the most successful slasher films of all time, Hitchcock is mostly a hit-and-miss affair. Sure, the screenplay’s witty throughout and the old-fashioned love story between Hitchcock and Alma is actually pretty sweet, but juxtaposed against the film’s darker tones and creepy sequences, the whole thing feels a little slapdash. We appreciate the off-kilter nature of the film, yet we wonder if this the direction Sacha Gervasi was going for—why weren’t there more scenes with Anthony Perkins (a standout James D’Arcy)? Flaws and other strange anomalies aside, Hitchcock might still prove to be a scream for hardcore Hitchcock fans.