Patrick Bateman has a great apartment, a better haircut and a business card he cannot stop comparing to everyone else’s. He is also a killer, and American Psycho never lets you settle on which fact matters more.
Mary Harron directed the film and co-wrote it with Guinevere Turner, working from Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel. Christian Bale plays Bateman, a wealthy New York City investment banker who leads a double life as a serial killer. The film runs 102 minutes. It premiered at Sundance on January 21, 2000, and opened in U.S. theaters on April 14.
Killer looks.
That tagline is the whole joke, and the film knows it.
Trailer, via LionsgateVOD.
A Business Card and a Wall Street Office
The setting is 1987 New York City. Bateman keeps a polished social façade while violent impulses run underneath. He dines at trendy restaurants, obsesses over his appearance and moves through a circle of wealthy associates he secretly despises. He is engaged to Evelyn Williams, played by Reese Witherspoon.
The film’s most famous scene is not a murder. It is a business meeting where Bateman and his colleagues show off their business cards. Bateman is enraged by the perceived superiority of Paul Allen’s card. Jared Leto plays Allen, a fellow investment banker.
That sequence is the film’s thesis in miniature. These men have nothing to say to each other, so they compete over stationery. The card is not a symbol of anything. It is the actual prize.
Paul Allen, Dorsia and an Axe
Bateman’s envy of Allen hardens around access. Allen can get reservations at Dorsia, an elite restaurant Bateman cannot get into. At a Christmas party, Bateman sets up a dinner with Allen. Allen does not recognize him and calls him Marcus Halberstram, the name of another colleague. Over the meal, Allen talks down to him, and Bateman’s resentment grows.
Bateman lures him to his apartment, gets him drunk and murders him with an axe. He disposes of the body, uses Allen’s keys to enter his apartment and leaves a message on Allen’s answering machine claiming Allen has gone to London.
Private investigator Donald Kimball, played by Willem Dafoe, questions Bateman about the disappearance and mentions sightings of Allen in London. Bateman deflects suspicion.
Christie, Luis Carruthers and the Rest
Bateman hires prostitutes Christie and Sabrina, engaging in sadistic acts before paying them to leave. Cara Seymour plays Christie. Krista Sutton plays Sabrina.
His violence nearly arouses colleague Luis Carruthers when Bateman tries to strangle him in a restaurant restroom. Carruthers misreads the act as a sexual advance. Bateman is horrified and flees. Matt Ross plays Carruthers.
Kimball’s second interview heightens Bateman’s paranoia, but the spree continues. He seduces a model and later kills a woman named Elizabeth, played by Guinevere Turner, the film’s co-writer.
What Harron and Turner Built
Ellis considered his novel unfilmable. Producer Edward R. Pressman was determined to adapt it and bought the film rights in 1992. Stuart Gordon, David Cronenberg and Rob Weiss were considered to direct before Harron and Turner began writing in 1996.
They set out to make a 1980s period film that emphasized the novel’s satire. Pre-production was a mess. Harron chose Bale for Bateman, but distributor Lions Gate Films wanted Leonardo DiCaprio. Harron was fired and replaced with Oliver Stone. After DiCaprio and Stone left over creative differences, Harron was rehired and allowed to cast Bale.
Principal photography began in February 1999 in Toronto and New York City. The cast around Bale is deep: Justin Theroux as Timothy Bryce, Josh Lucas as Craig McDermott, Bill Sage as David Van Patten, Chloë Sevigny as Jean, Samantha Mathis as Courtney Rawlinson, plus Stephen Bogaert as Harold Carnes, Bateman’s lawyer, and Reg E. Cathey as Al, a homeless man.
Ronald Reagan shows up in archive footage of his 1987 address on the Iran–Contra affair.
The Horror Is in the Schedule
American Psycho is listed as a horror comedy, and the genre tag is load-bearing. The film blends psychological horror and black comedy to satirize 1980s yuppie culture and consumerism. Bateman is the example, not the exception.
What makes the satire land is the banality of the calendar. Bateman kills between dinner reservations. He murders a homeless man and his dog in an alley after first offering help, then insulting them. He kills a colleague and immediately worries about the fallout. The film’s horror is not that Bateman is a monster hiding among normal people. It is that the normal people around him are so vacant that his monstrosity barely registers.
Sevigny’s Jean is the one figure who seems to see something. She is Bateman’s secretary, and her scenes are the film’s quietest. Harron does not overplay her. Jean is not a moral counterweight. She is just a person in the room.
Dafoe’s Kimball is the other pressure point. He asks questions and gets nothing. His two interviews with Bateman are the closest the film comes to a conventional investigation, and Harron refuses to resolve it. That refusal is the point.
The Numbers on the Table
American Psycho earns a 7.4 out of 10. The figure matches the published audience score of 7.4/10 on TMDB, drawn from 12,702 votes.
The film’s reputation rests on Bale, and that is fair. He plays Bateman as a man performing normalcy with visible effort, and the performance holds up because it never winks. But the direction is what keeps the film from tipping into a stunt. Harron shoots the violence flatly, without relish, and lets the comedy come from the social scenes instead.
The weaknesses are real. The back half loses some of the card-scene precision, and the plot’s unresolved threads will frustrate anyone who wants a clean answer about what Bateman actually did. That ambiguity is deliberate, but deliberate ambiguity is still ambiguity, and the film leans on it harder than it needs to.
What matters most is the timing. A satire of 1980s consumption built by a director who was fired for casting the right actor and then rehired to finish the job is a better story than most of what is on screen. The film’s best idea is that Bateman is not an aberration in his world. He is the logical end of it.
Credits and Figures
- Release year: 2000
- Runtime: 102 minutes
- Director: Mary Harron
- Screenplay: Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner, from the 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis
- Premiere: Sundance Film Festival, January 21, 2000
- U.S. theatrical release: April 14, 2000
- Setting: New York City, 1987
- Score: 7.4/10 (TMDB audience score, 12,702 votes)
American Psycho is a horror comedy that works because it treats its killer as a scheduling problem. The card scene, the axe, the answering machine message, the restaurant restroom — none of it is scary in the way a slasher is scary. It is funny in the way an office is funny, which is to say it is only funny if you have been in one. Bale’s Bateman is the performance the film is remembered for, and Harron’s refusal to explain him is the reason it still gets argued about. 7.4 of 10.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
