"I think my mask of sanity is about to slip."

Rating: 8/10 (26 August 2012)

I've been letting my thoughts for this film percolate now for about twenty four hours, so before any more time goes by I'll try to get it all down here. I thought there was something up with the picture when Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) and his cronies were comparing business cards for the first time. I got the impression that it was all a sham, that none of them were actually Vice Presidents of Pierce and Pierce, and that they were actually role playing the position of executives in anticipation of an eventual promotion. Bateman himself never seemed to do any work, other than having his secretary line up his appointments to meet associates or clients so he could spend additional time not working some more.
The bigger tip off that this was possibly all just an imaginary story was the 'Feed me a stray cat' scene. By this time it was pretty well established that Bateman was unhinged, but the question is, to what degree. Did he really engage in those prior killing sprees or did he just imagine it? Or a third possibility, was he envisioning what it would be like to go completely berserk if all bets were off and he could completely get away with it. By the time the story's over, I think you'd have to be open to all these various interpretations, because in the 'real' world, you wouldn't have a realtor showing an apartment where bodies hung in the closet just days before.
Going in, I had some trepidation when the DVD opened to a menu screen suggesting a splatter flick, and if I'm not mistaken, an image of a chain saw somewhere along the way. I've seen a couple of slasher/gore films in my time, and though I'm not that squeamish (any more), that kind of stuff does nothing for me. So anticipating a chain saw scene, I could only groan at the impossibility of the physics involved in poor Jean (Chloe Sevigny) taking a direct bull's eye hit like that at the bottom of the staircase. Just one more suggestion that this wasn't really happening.
And what of Donald Kimball (Willem Dafoe)? What happened to him? Was this Bateman's guilt becoming manifest, either because of an actual murder or because of his own malicious thoughts? Generally I get really upset about movies like this because they tamper with one's ability to follow a coherent story and come to a reliable conclusion about what happened in it. But then again, it's got the word 'Psycho' in the title, so I guess all bets are off. Personally, twenty five dollars for a couple of drinks at a trendy New York City night club is about as psycho as I'll ever get.