There’s something a lot of people don’t know about me, but if you’ve been following along here with me for a while, it won’t come as a surprise: I read American Psycho when I was 15 and instantly became a lifelong Bret Easton Ellis fan. In retrospect, even though I’m not sure I would encourage every high school sophomore to read Ellis’ controversial 1991 novel (Simon & Schuster killed it months before its publication), I’m impressed that even as a high school sophomore, I understood what it was trying to accomplish. I finished all 400 pages in three days, ignoring my required reading for class to read a book containing one of the most nauseating passages involving a woman and a rat. So it’s no surprise that I’m also a fan of Mary Harron’s equally controversial 2000 adaptation, which turned 26 on April 14th.
Despite the initial controversy, phantom protests, and accusations of misogyny, American Psycho was a critical success upon its release. Roger Ebert, who notoriously hated horror, opened his review of the film by applauding Harron for “transform[ing] a novel about blood lust into a movie about men’s vanity.” But Harron still faced criticism. In a piece for The New York Times, Harron wrote, “After American Psycho was shown at Sundance this year, I was asked over and over: ‘Aren’t you concerned about violence in entertainment?’ and ‘How can you release this film after Columbine?’” After she was asked how she would feel if the film inspired someone to become a murderer, she wrote, “When did a book or a film alone turn someone into a murderer? And what about all the other movies, books, and television dramas about serial killers? Would they be to blame too?”
Looking back, it seems ridiculous that anyone would even ask Harron these questions. Then again, despite the film going on to gain a cult across generations, inspiring everything from silly memes to trending TikTok audios and even a MySpace-era electronic band, there are still people– men especially– who don’t seem to understand that American Psycho is satire, or, like Fight Club, they do, but they’re too obsessed with the image of Patrick Bateman (a lizard-like, pearly-toothed Christian Bale) to really care about the fact that the film very obviously thinks he’s a big loser.
Patrick Bateman even says that he’s just an image when we first meet him. In an exquisite opening monologue, he tells us that he believes in taking care of himself, keeping himself on a strict daily routine. He tells us that he can do a thousand crunches. He tells us that Tom Cruise lives in the penthouse. He tells us about his skincare routine. And then, as he peels a translucent mask from his face, he tells us something that will clue us into what is to come:
“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman. Some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me. Only an entity. Something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable, I simply am not there.”
And he’s right. He’s frequently mistaken for someone else. Nothing he does is particularly impressive or unique. He eats, dresses, speaks, and lives like every other Wall Street yuppie. His lawyer calls him the wrong name. His perfectly sculpted body lacks any kind of eroticism. He’s handsome but not magnetic. He’s successful but we’re not sure how successful he really is. For all his beauty and all his wealth, nobody really seems to notice him. Which makes him the perfect serial killer.
Or is he? One of the most interesting questions when it comes to American Psycho is whether or not Patrick has actually ever killed anyone. The answer to that question hardly matters, though it’s fun to debate with friends as the credits roll. What matters is not whether Patrick is an actual serial killer. What matters is our culture that has made him this way–cold, empty, materialistic, willing to indulge in his darkest, most violent desires without consequence.
What makes American Psycho work so well is Bale’s performance, which remains one of the most impressive in horror history. It would have been easy to play Patrick Bateman as a serial killer in the traditional sense, but Bale does some terrific work here, making him a ferocious, pitiful character who you can’t help but laugh at, even when he’s chasing a woman with a chainsaw. As I wrote in my piece about some of the greatest Oscar snubs in history, “Bale plays Patrick with the right amount of friendliness to have his (supposed) crimes go undetected, even if there was ‘nothing behind the eyes,’ a choice inspired by watching Tom Cruise on Letterman.” As Roger Ebert put it (yes, he’s here again), ‘Christian Bale is heroic in the way he allows the character to leap joyfully into despicability; there is no instinct for self-preservation here, and that is one mark of a good actor.’ It’s that fearlessness that makes Bale so watchable, whether he’s comparing business cards or awkwardly shimmying to Huey Lewis and the News before taking an axe to Jared Leto’s head.”
Thanks to Harron’s direction and Bale’s fearless performance, American Psycho is just as effective now and as it was when it premiered 26 years ago. I’d argue it’s even more relevant. The culture that created Patrick Bateman–obsessed with image, wealth, violence, and relentless self-optimization–hasn’t disappeared, and with the rise of lookmaxxing influencers, it seems like there’s no signs of it stopping. Who knows? Perhaps we’ll see Patrick Bateman do a TikTok GRWM-style video in Luca Guadagnino’s forthcoming remake.