By Lee Ferguson, CBC News

Of the approximately 300 films screening at this year's TIFF, there's one special work that promises to send cinema lovers into a certifiable tizzy, and they don't even need to pay to see it. 

24 Hour Psycho Back and Forth and To and Fro is having its Toronto premiere at the new TIFF Bell Lightbox building.

Acclaimed visual artist Douglas Gordon's updated version of his Turner Prize-winning 24 Hour Psycho (1993) was unfurled to the public on Sept. 12, and will run 'round the clock daily until Oct. 23 as part of a special series designed to celebrate TIFF's new downtown digs.

For the uninitiated, Gordon's original 24 Hour Psycho project slowed down Alfred Hitchcock's terrifying masterpiece Psycho (1960) to a molasses-paced two frames per second, causing the original's running time to stretch out over a full 24 hours. By dissecting the movie in such detail, Gordon's project forces viewers to look at Hitchcock's classic in a whole new light. When I caught a scene of Norman Bates mopping up blood in that infamous motel bathroom at a MoMA screening in 2006, the character's movements took on a herky-jerkiness that made Norman seem more disturbed than in Hitchcock's original.

Gordon's updated installation, 24 Hour Psycho Back and Forth and To and Fro, goes one better, offering up two side-by-side projections of 24 Hour Psycho, with one running forward and one running backward, until both films meet in the middle for an identical, one-second shot. Though I have yet to witness this magical moment of convergence, I have observed the duel films at numerous points over the past 24 hours, and can assure you it's double the fun of 24 Hour Psycho - combining two images to make an experience weirder and often more beautiful than what Hitchcock ever intended.

Fellow film geeks over the years have assured me the can't-miss point in Gordon's Psycho installation(s) is the notorious shower scene. (Years ago, I encountered an obsessive who made multiple gallery visits in order to catch a glimpse of Marion Crane's final onscreen moments.) In that spirit, I camped out in the Lightbox's Main Gallery for five hours last night, hoping to observe that elusive scene and see how diehard Toronto cinephiles were responding to the work.

Though there was a steady stream of viewers to-ing and fro-ing from the Main Gallery, few lingered in the Gordon room. Chalk it up to gallery-opening overload - the Gordon video is running as part of a larger exhibition of rare posters, film clips and special installations by Atom Egoyan and Guy Maddin that were also competing for attention. Those that did enter the back installation room were mostly silent, even furtive, perhaps in response to the already deeply voyeuristic nature of Hitchcock's film, which becomes doubly so in its latest incarnation, where the characters almost appear to be spying on each other from the edge of one screen onto the next.

Two tourists, speaking in German, entered and engaged in what appeared to be an intense discussion about the shots in the film, complete with animated hand gestures. A father and tween daughter arrived and could be overheard clucking with delight at a lengthy scene involving looming shots of the Bates house, while dad informed the girl that the 1960 original "could make you jump out of your seat" without using much in the way of blood or special effects.

One lone viewer arrived later, studied the video intensely, then moved behind the screen to figure out how the dual images were being projected. When asked if he was already familiar with Gordon's work, my fellow film fan admitted he'd heard of it but never seen it projected. He joked that only "a diehard cineaste" would be perverse enough to stick around long enough to see the pivotal scene.

But as Norman Bates himself once observed, "We all go a little mad sometimes," and though a few hours of 24 Hour Psycho Back and Forth and To and Fro certainly makes for a crazy-making endurance test, it also draws you into the gleefully obsessive mindset that undoubtedly spawned Gordon's original 24 Hour Psycho in the first place. Part of the fun of watching the installation is hanging in long enough to catch some of its most iconic scenes, then seeing how much they're heightened by your own anticipation.

Thankfully, TIFF is presenting 24 Hour Psycho Back and Forth and To and Fro with an innovative twist. Once the gallery closes at 10 p.m., curious film buffs can still catch the ongoing 24-hour show outside, projected in all its ominous glory on dual screens that can be viewed through the Lightbox's south-facing King Street windows at night.

This made for a lively viewing experience, as passersby began to stop and gather by the windows to sneak peeks at the film, which was drawing ever closer to its climactic moment. Something about this nighttime setting brought out the best in the original Hitchcock movie. The shadows that were always there in Norman Bates' bird-adorned parlour are darker when viewed at night, stretching out in great ominous swoops across the wall as the film marches to its methodical, hypnotic beat. The eroticism is played up, too, and judging from the men who stopped to observe images of Janet Leigh in her black bra and slip, the film has lost none of its racy power since it shocked prim audiences back in 1960.

As for Gordon's slo-mo take on Psycho's most talked-about scene, it did finally arrive, and was every bit as stunning as I'd been led to believe. Though Hitchcock never showed anything all that explicit in his original shower sequence, watching the events unfold in Gordon's drawn-out version makes for a truly terrifying experience, one that was well worth the wait time. Film buffs are advised to catch this one-of-a-kind screening while they can. 

You can follow Lee throughout #TIFF10 at @cbcarts