American Psycho (2000) Directed by Mary Harron
Vanity, cocaine, money, and appearances were the major building blocks of the 1980s Manhattan scene. Perhaps the same could be said for today. The 80s was an awesome decade, but also had its downfalls. Greed and materialism grew like crazy, but some awesome kick ass music also came out. This movie gives an insight of the yuppie lifestyle, although a twisted insight. Based on a book written by Brett Easton Ellis, “American Psycho” gives the story of Patrick Batemen, a rich investment banker whose blood lust slowly consumes his sanity. I have seen this movie plenty of times and I always love discussing the ending with friends. The ambiguity of the final 15 or so minutes is awesome and open to interpretation. Shall we take the plunge into the material world of a lunatic 80s yuppie? Buckle up because this movie is intense.
Patrick Bateman’s (Christian Bale, the gravely voiced Batman) life revolves around fancy restaurants and appearances in the Manhattan night life. His fiancée Evelyn (Reese Witherspoon), his shallow douchebag friends and other associates rule his existence, and determine nearly every aspect of his life. He gives his daily regiment to us in great detail, numerous moisturizers, workouts, and face scrubs make his nearly perfect appearance. He is a big fan of music; mostly whatever was really popular at the moment. Musicians such as Phil Collins, Whitney Houston, Huey Lewis and the News, and Robert Palmer make up his playlist on a daily basis. He has great taste for designer clothes and expensive lavish suits.
His life is full of material competition, where his friends compare business cards, with different shades of white, different styles of font, and styles of print. Paul Allen (Jared Leto) presents his card, which enrages Bateman, because he cannot stand the fact that it is superior to his. Later walking down an alley Patrick appears to befriend a homeless man before berating him and finally stabbing him to death and even stomping his dog (which caused my dog to wake up and stare at the TV, she was not amused Bateman!). He makes it to a Christmas party, thrown by his fiancé Evelyn. Bateman then makes plans with Paul to have dinner. Paul commonly confuses Patrick with Marcus Halberstram, although they really don’t look alike at all. Paul gets sloshed and Patrick brings him back to his place. He goes off on a big speech about Huey Lewis, I mean who wouldn’t? Huey is pretty awesome. “Hip to Be Square” starts playing, Patrick puts on a raincoat, and already has newspaper on the floor, and he then buries an axe into Paul’s face and frantically chops him up. Later you see Patrick dragging an overnight bag to the street that is leaving a blood trail. He puts the bag into the trunk of a taxi. He goes to Paul’s apartment and makes it look like Paul ran off to London. The next day at work detective Donald Kimball (Willem Dafoe) meets with Patrick at his office about Paul disappearing. After a long awkward conversation, Donald leaves and Patrick plans for the night ahead.
That night Patrick picks up a hooker off the street. This woman is homely, like ugh. She looks like if Uma Thurmond did nothing but do crack for three months. Plus the straight cut bangs are always a turnoff, barf. Anyway he gets the hooker into his car and takes her to his apartment, he tells her she will only respond to the name Christie and his name is Paul Allen. He makes her bathe, while drinking expensive wine. Patrick then makes a phone call to an escort service and asks for a blonde escort to come to his place, and she must be open to doing couples. The escort arrives, and she’s not as blonde as Patrick wanted, but he tells her that her name is Sabrina, again he says his name is Paul. He gives a long speech about Genesis and Phil Collins. During his speech he makes Christie bend over on the bed, and makes Sabrina dance in her underwear. After his extended Phil Collins history lesson, he makes Sabrina go down on Christie. He positions a camera and joins into the festivities. During the intense sex scene Patrick basically just looks at himself in the mirror the whole time, flexing. After the crazy threesome, they are all sleeping in his bed, Patrick tells them when they wake that they aren’t finished yet. The next scene shows the prostitutes leaving, crying and bloodied. He returns the sex tape he recorded to a video rental store.
The next day, Luis Carruthers shows his new card to guys. Patrick tries to kill Carruthers in the bathroom, but he thinks that Patrick wants him, so he’s obviously gay. That night Bateman picks up a model in a coke filled nightclub, and takes her home. He is shown the next morning with a lock of her hair. He invites his secretary to go to dinner with him. She comes over that night and they talk for a while. Bateman holds a nail gun up to her head, without her noticing. His fiancé calls and leaves a message, he then tells the secretary to leave. The next day, the detective meets Patrick for lunch and informs him that he’s not under suspicion that others have vouched for his whereabouts during the night of incident.
Again Patrick gets the homely hooker to join in a threesome with him and his friend Elizabeth. Before he gets the women drugged, he goes off on a speech about Whitney Houston, it is funny how much he knows about pop music of that time. Bateman kills Elizabeth and Christie runs. Christie discovers numerous corpses stashed away in the closet. She runs out into the hallway screaming and slamming on doors. Bateman chases after her with a chainsaw. She runs down a spiral staircase screaming, and Bateman drops the chainsaw on her, thus killing her. With all the screaming and chainsaw noise, no one wakes up and notices it, very odd.
Bateman then breaks off his engagement with Evelyn, says he’s bored with the relationship. Which is fine because she doesn’t even notice that he’s drawing a picture of the murder he committed the night before, so why marry someone that oblivious? He again says that he has to return tapes to a video store. Later in the night he uses an ATM, the screen reads “feed me a stray cat”, so Patrick grabs a kitten, holds a gun to its head and pushes it towards the machine. An old lady comes by and yells at him, he shoots the old bat and runs. The police chase him but he destroys police cars and shoots a couple officers. He tries to flee to his office but goes into the wrong building; the guard calls him Mr. Smith, and acts like he knows him. Patrick shoots the guard and runs outside. He then turns back into the building and shoots the janitor. He finally makes it to his office, calls his lawyer and confesses about all the murders he’s committed and how the police are after him.
The next morning, Patrick goes to Paul’s apartment only to find that all the bodies are gone, the apartment is empty and a realtor is there showing the place to a couple. Patrick is asked to leave and he goes to meet his colleagues and lawyer. His secretary then gets a bizarre call from Patrick, so she looks in his desk for answers, finding his planner that is full of gruesome drawings of murder and rape. Patrick talks to his lawyer, and tries to convince him he is a serial killer. His lawyer mistakes him for another colleague (a common trend in the film) and thinks its all one big joke he’s playing, stating that Bateman is a wuss and would never do that. Patrick tries to tell him he killed Paul and others. The lawyer says it’s impossible because he had dinner with Paul twice in London. Patrick realizes that no one even noticed that he did those crimes, and that his confession meant nothing.
Yikes this is a long review, but there is a lot going on in this and it is hard to sum up in a short amount of time. The whole movie is a bit odd; people never seem to call Patrick by the same name. He is at least like 3 other people in the movie. In the end we see that no one even realizes what happened, nor is Paul Allen really dead, or is he? It is so ambiguous about what happens and what is actually in his head. There are millions of theories people have about the movie. A quick google search brings up tons, and since this is my blog, you are going to get mine.
My thought at the end is that Patrick did commit the murders, he did kill Paul Allen. The thing is that all of his colleagues and cohorts are so self involved and full of themselves that they don’t even notice what is going on in front of their own faces. This feeds into the fact that Paul thinks that Patrick is Halberstram, the guard calls him Mr. Smith, and the lawyer thinks he’s yet another person. SO why wouldn’t the lawyer mistake another guy that was in London as Paul Allen? Even Patrick’s own fiancé doesn’t notice the fact that he’s drawing a murder scene during lunch. Also during the movie in multiple scenes Patrick says some really bizarre stuff, like telling the bartender she’s an ugly bitch and he wants to killer and play with her blood. All of the bizarre things seem to go unnoticed.
I have a second theory. Patrick is a schizophrenic, he has multiple personalities and this is why he is called by multiple names. I also believe that Paul Allen is yet another personality of Patrick’s. Paul Allen is the sane side of Patrick, and when he murders Paul, that is when the weird crazy side of Patrick takes over. It is after that murder that Patrick goes off the deep end and he cannot control his lust for murder. The detective is a figment of Patrick’s imagination and possibly his conscience speaking to him. The moment at the ATM, when it reads “feed me a stray cat” is also in his head. The following police chase is an illusion, and never really happened. He is in fact insane but is he a murderer? Maybe, but it is all up to interpretation.
Finally, a conclusion! This movie is great the acting is solid. Christian Bale is an awesome actor who fully dives into a role and takes it to it’s extreme. He is definitely full of himself and fits the 80s yuppie to a T. The scenes of murder are gore and insane, the sex scenes are crazy too. The soundtrack to the movie is an awesome collection of 80s pop. I would suggest this movie to anyone that loves horror or psychological thrillers. I love ready people’s theories about the ending and what really happens. I would give this movie an A. If you have any interesting theories about what happens, I would love to hear them! Shoot me an email at 31horrormovies@gmail.com. If you want to call me an idiot, say I’m full of shit, whatever, get at me! I would love to hear feedback on my blog. Feel free to follow me on twitter @31HorrorMovies. One last thing…don’t just stare at it! EAT IT!
