American Psycho (2000)

Rating: 7/10 (3 May 2009)

I don't know if you've noticed, but serial killer movies in the horror genre have grown stale. Since 1986's very good Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, they've been cheap and too easy to produce. So, literally, just about everyone looking to make a name for themselves has made some kind of serial killer movie. The success of 2002's direct-to-video masterpiece Dahmer even started a series (Gacy, Bundy, Ed Gein). Also, multiple films based on the Zodiac killer, dozens of home invasion themed films, hundreds of "based on a true story" clones, and even parodies such as 2006's Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. It's out of control. Reality in horror has never been more popular. Yet, the reality of these serial killer films is no more real than the masters of the sub-genre. Henry, for one. Also- 1991's The Silence of the Lambs, 1995's Se7en, 1973's Deranged, Wes Craven's immortal The Last House on the Left, and perhaps Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic Psycho. This genre screams, "Been there. Done that." A new film about a serial killer needs a fresh approach.
Enter: American Psycho. This 2000 adaptation of the controversial Brett Easton Ellis novel took almost a decade to be made, but I think the film dares to go where almost no other killer film will- blaming its' killer on the culture of America itself. Being a rich, handsome, well-dressed bachelor in the New York business and club scenes of the mid-to-late 80's gives him a wealth of opportunities to meet women he would spend only a night with. Prostitutes, models, drug users, friends of friends. Patrick Bateman is one of the most sickening serial killer characters ever put on screen. He is a member of the sort of Wall Street Elite- a soulless, robotically judgmental bunch who go anywhere they want, do whatever they want, say whatever they want to - with no consequences. But even with this group, there is a chain of superiority. Built by acquiring certain status symbols. And with Patrick being toward the bottom of said chain, he's grown so needy of the status and yet, always receiving less of the validation that his fellow suits are pulling in. With that urge for utmost entitlement not satisfied, Patrick is becoming a blank rage.
Now, that sounds rather cold and boring. It is, but it's also meant to be. The film captures the empty artificiality of Bateman and his type, which are hollow shells. Like an assembly line of pods which factory workers fill with raw material that are shaped by machines into products. Products that all look the same and are hard to tell apart. And that's the key to the film. Psycho is a world where the vultures (the "werewolves of Wall Street," if you will) and their prey are equally hard to differentiate between. Patrick's victims are as faceless or nameless as he is (Patrick is all throughout the film mistaken for different people). And that's where the story gets interesting. Because, now the concept of things like alibis are irrelevant. Patrick lives in a who's-who society of people who are all on drugs or can't be bothered to pay attention to where they've been because their focus is on where they have to be next. It's almost a dark fantasy world, one where again, there are no consequences because there is zero sense of accountability. And in this world, that won't change. The system is too fed by the powers in charge of the nation. If one changes, the other has to change too. In a movie like this, "change" is nothing more than a lyric in a Michael Jackson song.
The film remains purely fascinating. It's always updating itself with new information, and Patrick does undergo a crude character arc of sorts. I especially find it intriguing how his class of victims begins to change as the film progresses. Moving from prostitutes and homeless beggars to his rich friends and business associates. Even though he kills the man he sees who in his mind has it all, Paul Allen (played by 90's TV heartthrob, Jared Leto), no one notices that he's even missing. Patrick also assumes the identity of one of his other clones, no one notices. No one cares to notice. A fascinating turn of the knife from a similar set-up, for instance in 1999's The Talented Mr. Ripley- where, people actually do notice when the guy who has-it-all goes missing. The horror of American Psycho is the manner in which the film feeds Bateman his victims. Some of them have a human side, which is all we're given to relate to in the film. Otherwise, we're just sitting back and watching the horrors taking place on screen served up cold with no morality and no end in sight to the story.
Lastly, the relevance of American Psycho today is how shockingly the film predicted a piece of history that was about to take place. How much the character portrayals of Bateman and his gang of clones have in common with former U.S. "President" George W. Bush and his administration of evil minions. Other than the obvious heartless and soulless quality to these people, was how much Bush was like a fictional character. And like Bateman himself. His father was a huge power icon (Bateman's father in Psycho owns the company everyone works at), he was a drone selected to do an important job and took advantage of the position for his own personal gains, he's handsome and was dressed well, says everything his cronies wanted to hear even when he was just spitting and not saying anything, and untold numbers of people died because of him. He was so pathetic in fact, he could've been Bateman's brother. That truly makes American Psycho a horror film unlike any other. One that retroactively has its' finger on the pulse of real life terror and tragedy. Oliver Stone's character study, W., was too little, too late.