*Spoiler Alert*
American psycho (2000) is a satirical psychological horror film that follows the life of Patrick Bateman, a handsome, well-presented, wealthy investment banker who hides his psychotic serial killer personality that comes out at night. Mary Harron, the director, keeps the audience on the edge of their seat throughout, keeping the truth hidden and allowing viewers to use their imagination and try to uncover what will happen at the end.
A quick summary of the film is that we follow the vanity of Bateman and his friends, the relationship he has with his fiancé and his affair. We watch Bateman kill many people, mainly women, and his colleague Paul Allen, bringing detective Kimball in to investigate. Bateman hides the dead bodies of his victims in Allen's apartment and we watch him kill police officers and security guards towards the end. All of this points to the fact that Bateman is guilty. He is a killer. However, that all changes in the final scene with Bateman at a restaurant with his lawyer and colleagues who laugh off his confession of killing people and continue their daily talk, making us second guess everything we have just watched.
The themes that are brought up within this film, especially in the character of Bateman, is the idea of vanity, materialism, and hiding behind a mask. Vanity is expressed through the famous scene of Bateman and his other colleagues flaunting their business cards to each other, comparing the the slight differences between each card with different fonts and a slight colour change. Bateman's vanity is expressed in his rage towards another colleague of his having a better card than him, however, this is not reflected as a psychotic trait specifically for Bateman but a trait that is in all the colleagues. Presenting that in this society we focus on materialism and the idea of wanting to be better than everyone else. This is also expressed in an early scene of Bateman narrating his skin care routine, in which he goes through every step that gets his skin 'perfect' and puts on a clear face mask. Even though the face mask is clear it still distorts his image to an extent, which could indicate that even though he hides his true self and thoughts behind the rich businessmen persona there is still evidence of who he really is in his normal self if you look close enough.
One thing that everyone who has seen this film can say is that they did not expect that ending. Throughout the film we are presented with a rude, controlling character who cares about his fake image and treats people, especially women, with no respect. We are given a character who lacks guilt, morality and 'human' emotion, killing anyone he meets at night using every type of weapon: chainsaw, knives, nail gun, axe and so on. However the ending of the film completely messes with our view of him and makes us think of one question: did he really kill all those people?
One theory behind the ending of the film which is the stance that I am going to take is that Bateman did kill people, he is a killer not just a psychopath, but he did not kill them all. There are many pointers throughout the film if you look carefully that point to this stance, the main one being that Paul Allen is alive. In the last scene Bateman goes up to his lawyer, Carnes and mentions the phone call from the night before (where he confessed to the murders). Carnes mistakes Bateman as another colleague and laughs off what he said as if it was a joke, Bateman reconfesses, but Carnes says how it is impossible because he recently had dinner with Allen in London. This supports the view that I suggest that he did not kill Allen, however I do not think that means he is not a killer. The ambiguous ending and the idea that Bateman got away with all those murders with no consequence convey the idea that as the whole film is from Bateman's perspective and narrated by him, we never know that what he is seeing is real or part of his delusions and vivid imagination.
We witness Bateman killing many people, a homeless man, prostitutes, a model, and his colleague Paul Allen. This last death is the one that brings him the most problems, as it brings the detective Kimball to his office investigating the disappearance of Paul Allen. This leads us to believe that Kimball will uncover the truth behind who killed Allen, as when he pushes Bateman it is evident that he has no alibi. However, when they meet for lunch later on in the film we find out that Kimball is dropping the suspicions on Bateman as it turns out he has an alibi. But how did this happen? This is one of the clues that Bateman did not kill Paul Allen, and he really imagined the whole thing through his psychotic thoughts and vivid imagination.
As above, more evidence that supports the idea that some of what we see is part of his imagination occurs in the scene where Bateman goes back to Allen's apartment to clean up the dead bodies that he left there; but when he arrives there are no bodies to be found. So what happened to these bodies? It could be argued that this is just evidence that he imagined all those bodies that he left in the apartment. Mary Harron uses these scenes to present a great deal of doubt about the extent to Bateman's crimes throughout the film with subtle clues that what he sees is just in his imagination: with the ATM machine displaying the message "feed me a stray cat".
Overall, American Psycho makes us question as a viewer if what he are really seeing is real or a figment of Bateman's imagination. No matter what perspective and what stance you take after watching and rewatching the film and the ambiguous ending, one fact that cannot be debated is that Patrick Bateman is a psychopath. I would argue that with the ending of the film it is not about who he killed and who he didn't kill but how if he did kill them he got away with it. In his circle of friends and colleagues they are all self-absorbed and self-centred, only caring about their image (with each colleague having the same haircut) and their wealth, as for them their only problem is getting a reservation at the high class restaurant Dorsia. Even though Bateman is the only killer within his colleagues he blends in well and it could be said that they are all psycho's in this materialistic world.
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