Some early scares this Halloween month come courtesy of theHitchcock trailer, which shows Anthony Hopkins as Alfred Hitchcock in the film chronicling the making of Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece, Psycho. It is somewhat startling to see the Oscar-winning actor reshaped by prosthetic makeup and body padding, but he does achieve the filmmaker’s singular profile. (The voice, however, is another story—Hitchcock, here, sounds like he is being played by Hannibal Lector, which has its own spooky effect.) Hitchcockseems to lean heavily on the melodrama—between the director and his wife (who has agreed to help finance Psycho), and between the director and the studio—and macabre imagery involving offhand murder references, dropped knives, jokes about finger sandwiches, throat-slitting motions, etc. Also: the iconic Psycho shower scene, which is re-interpreted in the preview by Scarlett Johansson, who plays Janet Leigh, the nubile blonde star of the thriller. But perhaps the most captivating performance, at least teased below, seems to be Helen Mirren’s. She plays Hitch’s level-headed wife, Alma Reville, the only person who is seemingly not seduced by the master of suspense.

Hitchcock opens in theaters on November 23.