this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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The wild thing to me about anyone idolizing the character in American Psycho is that it's all but outright stated outright that the guy lives in wonderland and hallucinated all of his wild power fantasies except maybe being rich. He's outright called a dweeb by his lawyer at the end once he has a complete mental breakdown. It's like someone idolizing Nicholas Cage's character in Vampire's Kiss.
I don't think that was the takeaway from the American Psycho book. There's a lot of unknowns that the author leaves up to the reader, but at no point did I get the impression the whole thing was a hallucination. It can go a lot of ways from an interpretation standpoint, but there is no definitive ending in either the book or the movie (I believe the movie is even made more ambiguous on purpose).
There's just as good of a chance that he killed everyone and got away with it because he's rich and powerful (a satirical characteristic of 80's "power" businessmen the book was trying to expose).
Most assume he killed at least the prostitutes, because there are callbacks and some police records indicating that in the background. It's only very slightly questionable if he killed his peers/business associates.
Here's an article that breaks it down from the movie standpoint
I'll call out an excerpt from the end:
Both primary competing theories on the movie are that he killed almost everyone, or everyone. In the books it's similar, even less ambiguous that he killed at least several people.
I would say the less popular and less supported version of the story is that he hallucinated everything. It's kind of one of those theories that makes sense, but the "facts" in the story don't add up and force a break of character. It also fights against the narrative of the author who was intending it to be a satire of the power-mad, power-hungry, grab-them-by-the-pussy businessmen of the 80's, and what they could get away with.
I know everyone's exhausted by politics, but truthfully, people like trump, the playboy "billionaire" tycoons of the 80's was who Patrick was supposed to be emulating.
And we all know trump could shoot someone on 5th ave and get away with it at this point.
Looks like the author knew their stuff.
Interesting, I didn't even know there was a book. The article you linked mentions the film writers said the book was meant to be ambiguous and they wanted that same angle for the movie. I found it hard to not think Bateman was completely detached from reality by the time he gets to the ATM, though I thought it was at least somewhat believable to that point iirc.
The movie (and book I guess) seems to be told from the perspective of Bateman (he narrates and is in almost every scene) so I thought it seemed up in the air if anything was real or just his imagination. I took from it that he himself definitely cannot tell what is fantasy and reality and you were along for the ride with his perception. His murders and their aftermath were pretty outlandish ie dragging the body bag with a huge blood trail past the doorkeeper, the collection of bodies that all mysteriously vanished overnight, the overdramatic helicopter spotlights into his windows during the meltdown phone call, etc. I think the only realistic murder really was the hobo where he could just leave the guy there. And if some were fake idk why any of them would be real.
I have the image of Bateman being just permanently aloof and fitting the 'dweeb' description his lawyer gave while nothing happened but him staring off into the distance daydreaming/hallucinating all of his batshit fantasies or maybe scribbling ferociously into his calendar.