American Psycho

...Cue the video

So as we travel down the Netflix list once again, we get to American Psycho. This movie came out in 2000 but takes place in the 80s. And its a strange one.

American Psycho centers around Patrick Bateman (played by Christian Bale), a man who works on WallStreet and lives a double life as a serial killer.

And that's the entire movie...

Honestly, there isn't much of a story to American Psycho. Its just following Christian Bale around as he acts like a complete weirdo, talking about 80's rock bands, fucking prostitutes, and murdering people really at random.

I guess the lure to this movie is that it is kind of a case study of a person with antisocial personality disorder, which Bateman definitely has. He has no regard for the lives of others, has little to no emotions, and he's incredibly charismatic and very few people suspect he's anything other than an extroverted people person, when really he's the exact opposite.

I think this movie gives a "Antisocial personality disorder for Dummies" presentation with Patrick Bateman and while its incredibly obvious, as he exhibits all the signs to the audience, you understand why he doesn't get caught. He's incredibly charismatic. He's a little on the strange side socially but lots of people just chalk it up to him being an asshole. He lets out frustration in two ways, killing people obviously but also by sexual aggression.

And Christian Bale plays it really, really well. Sure the performance is over the top but I guess that's the fun part about it.

Bale keeps that face of complete and utter disregard for everyone up THE ENTIRE movie. There are emotions but not regular human emotions. And that adds to the humor of the movie. I guess they couldn't make a movie about nothing but a serial killer going about his murdering routine without throwing in some dark humor. And the humor is good. If you're not into really dark humor, you won't like it, but even some people who don't find that their cup of tea might appreciate how the humor is executed very cleverly.

As for the rest of the cast... well they're not really in the film to begin with.

Willem Defoe is in this movie. I don't really know why, he serves almost little to no point in the movie. Which is a shame. He plays a detective who is looking into the disappearance of one of Batman's victims.

Now when Defoe came in, I thought they were going to do something similar to what they did in Boondock Saints. Having the murders go on and enjoying the character of Patrick Bateman while also watching the investigation of Willem Defoe in the crazy psycho performance he always brings.

But Defoe has maybe two scenes and then is never heard from again in the movie. Bateman doesn't kill him, he just never comes back.

Reese Witherspoon is in this movie... so that happened.

The point is, the movie is solely about Patrick Bateman. Everyone else is just bodies that you wonder if he's going to kill or not.

I'm really conflicted with this movie because it really delves into a subject I don't find that interesting. Movies and TV shows about the serial killers themselves, I find really boring and just counter intuitive.

When I was doing reviews of TV pilots, I really wanted to do a review of the Dexter season premiere. Because it doesn't do anything for me.

Patrick Bateman was at least interesting as to how evil he was and how cartoony he was. Dexter is just bland and boring.

That being said, I do like the topic of serial killers. Shows like Criminal Minds, I really do like. But thats more about these detectives getting in figurative chess matches with these serial killers and through that you can see into the mind of these killers. From what I remember of Dexter, it was just put in front of me and when faced with it, it was just boring.

I have the same problem with American Psycho. I don't sympathize with him, I just laugh and am a little interested in the performance of someone so cartoony.

Now since Dexter is on Netflix I do want to try it again, people tell me it takes a couple episodes to really get into it... we'll see.

The last thing I'll say about American Psycho is the ending...

At some point, Bateman just cracks. He starts feeding cats to ATMs and just goes nuts, killing a lot of people. Now there's a side of the film that says he's just not in a right frame of mind and some things get imagined... I don't know and it kind of made me say ehh to the ending. Not cause it was boring, it just wasn't as stellar as I think it was meant to be. I like open ended endings but this one was more confusing than question raising.

Overall the movie is just strange. Little to no plot, just a case study into a serial killer who is actually really funny in a sick disturbed way. Unsympathetic and just down right odd, American Psycho to me is really just okay. Creative, and really good in certain elements of the movie but doesn't quite hit the mark for me.

So have you seen American Psycho? What did you think? Am I missing something? Comment below and lets discuss.

I'll leave you with this. I just want to give an actual example of Bale's performance and maybe you'll actually understand it when I say strange. You may be saying, Connor, isn't a movie about a serial killer going to be strange anyway? Well you definitely haven't seen this movie. Enjoy.