American Psycho — What It All Meant

Disclaimer: This article is a spoiler heavy breakdown of the ending of the movie American Psycho. If you have not seen the movie, I recommend not reading this until you have.

“I mean, I guess I’m a pretty sick guy.” -Patrick Bateman

Mary Harron’s adaptation of the controversial Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho is met with horror, fascination and confusion. This is particularly true in the case of its twist ending which is the source of frequent debate. Is Paul Allen really dead? Did Bateman kill anyone? How much of it was “in his head”?

In order to answer these questions and more importantly, in order to ensure the answers make sense, we need to get to the core of what the movie and the source material is about. However, I’m aware of a tendency of certain articles to make readers go through paragraph after paragraph before finally revealing the answer. For the sake of your sanity, I will show my hand now:

Patrick Bateman did kill Paul Allen. In fact he killed most, if not all, of the murders he thinks he committed.

Now, I’m aware this raises more questions than it answers. After all, the ending clearly shows that Bateman imagined the murders, right? The bodies were gone from Allen’s apartment. His lawyer had dinner with Paul Allen after Bateman had ‘murdered’ him. And Bateman’s notebook found by his secretary Jean reveals that Bateman was nothing more than a disturbed man with a vivid imagination. But is it really as simple as that?

I want to start by tracing the roots of the movie by talking about how the director of the movie, Mary Harron, responded to people believing that the ending meant Bateman’s murders were all a fantasy.

“One thing I think is a failure on my part is everyone keeps coming out of the film thinking it’s all a dream, and I never intended that (…) I think it’s a failure of mine in the final scene that I just got the emphasis wrong, because I should have left it more open ended (…) It makes it look like it was all in his head, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s not.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going down the director’s opinion is gospel route. I’m a firm believer of the ‘The Death of the Author’. However, the director’s opinion can provide important context. So let’s explore this, why would Mary Harron say that? If the murders did happen, how do you explain, well, the whole movie?

American Psycho is based on a novel of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis. Ellis wrote the book to satirize 80s yuppie society, a society which Ellis experienced and partook in. Like the book, the movie is a caricature of the materialism of the upper class, particularly socialites. The function of Bateman as a character is to push the boundaries of materialism to the absolute extreme. This materialism is epitomized in a scene where a colleague of Bateman’s named Luis witnesses Bateman dragging a dead body out of an apartment building. Luis does not notice the body but rather offers a compliment on the golf bag the body is inside. This is a prime example how materialism blocks these people from seeing the decadence underneath. No one notices that Bateman is a serial killer because they are incredibly self absorbed. Bateman is rich, handsome, well dressed and possesses considerable status. This allows him to commit his crimes unnoticed. When we watch the scene where Bateman chases one of his would-be victims through an apartment block with a chainsaw, we wonder why no one is coming to her rescue while she bangs on random doors and shouts for help. When you conclude the whole scenario was a figment of Bateman’s imagination it all makes sense, but the truth is far more sinister; they don’t help because they don’t notice or simply don’t care.

But, how do you explain the bodies in Allen’s apartment? They just disappeared? Well, not exactly. Bateman is not the only depraved character in the story, he is merely the driving force. The bodies in Allen’s apartment did exist but were removed by the realtor so she could sell the property. Re-watch the scene where Bateman returns to the apartment and notice how the realtor’s tone instantly becomes hostile when she realizes he is not there to view the apartment. She catches on quickly to why he is there and asks him to leave. In the book, the room is described as smelling overwhelmingly of flowers- the realtor placed them there to disguise the smell left by the corpses. Bateman is not the only monster in the world he inhabits, he merely exemplifies its absolute worst qualities.

So if Paul Allen isn’t dead, who did Bateman’s lawyer have dinner with? The answer is that it doesn’t matter, and that’s kind of the point. Throughout American Psycho there is a recurring theme of mistaken identity. Right up until his untimely death, Allen mistakes Bateman for Marcus Halberstram, a man who also works at Bateman’s firm. In the famous business card scene, Allen calls Craig McDermott ‘Baxter’ and this goes unnoticed. It is not only Allen who has poor retention for names. In the final scene, Bateman’s lawyer-Carnes-continuously refers to Bateman as ‘Davis’, refusing to accept he is in fact talking to Patrick Bateman, a client of his. The theme of mistaken identity is a device employed by Ellis and Harron to emphasize the extreme shallowness of these individuals. They are so self-interested they can’t even identify each other. Carnes believes he had dinner with Paul Allen, but in reality he had dinner with someone else. Bateman gives as good a confession as one can give and gets nowhere with it. The movie concludes with Bateman coming to the realization that in the depraved world he inhabits and contributes to, there is no escape for him. There is no retribution, no comeuppance, no closure. He is destined to continue his cycle of murder and insanity, and in that lies his own personal hell.

“My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis. My punishment continues to allude me. And I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.”