After years of treatment at a mental institution for the criminally insane, serial killer Norman Bates is finally released. Deciding to move back into his long-dead mother’s infamous old house, he soon finds himself tormented by “her” demands and begins to question his own sanity.

Norman Bates is still running his little motel, and he has kept the dressed skeleton he calls mother. One of his guests is a young girl who has left the convent where she lived. To get some help he employs a young man. One day a nosey journalist comes to see him to ask questions about his past.