Underwhelming and Basic

Rating: 5/10 (26 June 2016)

A film like American Psycho is one that attracts a certain type of person. Its primary fan base is youthful people with high adrenaline and desire to watch entertaining violence while also longing for more meaning that is easy and accessible to them. The meaning this type of people long for doesn't even have to be of much substance, as long as these viewers are able to understand it and justify their taste with a comment on the lines of "no, it is good because it is satirizing violence, not condoning it" even though there is a good chance this type of person also just enjoys this type of content already, rendering the satire aspect useless for the person's argument.
I don't think American Psycho is a particularly bad film, but I don't think it is a particularly good film. I believe this film relies too much on entertaining violence and its satire is rather flat. One should make close attention to Bale's role as Patrick Bateman. Bateman is rather a caricature, or at least his character is fairly static. However, while one could look at that as a negative, it isn't necessarily bad. The superficiality and lack of (for the most part) real dimension of the protagonist character can be argued to benefit from the notion that such people in his position of power themselves take on a public persona that in turn becomes who they are. Adopting said persona in this position could lead the individual to lack normal emotional and mental depth. Patrick Bateman as a character has little depth, and because of this, he fills the empty hole with the satisfaction of fulfilling hedonistic fantasies including misogyny and murder. The film opens with a scene of Bateman narrating about who he is as an individual, practically noting how superficial and empty he really is. To further the point, they have him applying a materialistic skin mask to develop who our protagonist is. Now, this is what the film sets up and has working for it. Unfortunately, as the film progresses, I feel the film focuses on the entertainment aspect of murder and misogyny (which admittedly is good in some scenes) up to the point that it overshadows satire and leaves it somewhat undeveloped.
I feel that American Psycho does not live up to what it sets up leading to a rather underwhelming and predictable climax. At least it was to me.
With this in mind some may wonder why certain people flock to defend the film? The answer is that it fits a formula and adopts tropes that some impressionable people like. Such tropes include insane serial killer protagonist, violent and sexual scenes played comically and set to popular music, and of course surface level satire to make the viewer feel smart for noticing and not guilty for enjoying the violence and sex. The film has its moments to shine, but ultimately falls flat. Not the worst, but far from the best.
I expect just solely due to my lukewarm rating and negative title, there will be fans who will mark this review as "unhelpful." Well, maybe not as much now that I addressed this.