American Psycho Notes

American Psycho
Dir. Mary Hannon
Based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis
Rating on Imdb 7.5/10

Budget:

 $8,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

 $4,961,015 (USA) (16 April 2000) (1236 Screens)

Gross:

 $15,070,285 (USA) (30 July 2000)

Patrick Bateman, a young, well to do man working on wall street at his father's company kills for no reason at all. As his life progresses his hatred for the world becomes more and more intense.


The pace of the film follows the main character Patrick Bateman's decent into madness. The was the film starts involves him narrating his own life in disturbing and illuminating detail. The pace of the film increases as we see his murders ranging from the simple stabbing of a homeless man to chasing a woman through his hotel with a chainsaw. A shootout at a later point in the film highlights his bloodlust and the surreal elements in the film, is it real or imaginary? The film can also be considered a dark comedy because however gruesome and brutal the visuals are they still aren't real and is just the characters way of coping with life which the narration in the first few minutes of the film explains and further shows elements of this imaginary world he lives in "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."




This film is relevant because it highlights the narrative aspects of a psychological thriller, Patrick Bateman is clearly an unreliable narrator but throughout we only see from his viewpoint- never from any of the other characters so the fact that Patrick is mentally unstable, isn't revealed until the end.