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Indeed, one extended sequence involving Bateman’s besotted secretary Jean plays as an elaborately grim joke about Bateman’s impotence. Similarly, there’s something inherently absurd about the image of Bateman dressed in a raincoat and primed for a kill, pausing to explain the beauty of Huey Lewis and the News to his intended victim. There are few images that so effectively summarise the aesthetic of American Psycho as Bateman chasing one of his victims through an apartment complex with a chainsaw, naked apart from a set of bright white runners. However, Harron makes a point to play these slasher elements as a pitch black comedy. The film devotes a great deal of attention to the instruments of Bateman’s sadistic pleasures: the pick axe, the nail gun, the rain coat, the duct tape, the chainsaw, the coathanger. One of the video tapes that Bateman keeps on hand is Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and one late sequence allows Patrick to play that out.

Much of the film’s aesthetic riffs on the iconography of a certain kind of horror film, somewhere between the slasher movie of the late seventies and the so-called “torture porn” of the early millennium. The film even offers a few traditional jump scares. Dismembered body parts appear at various points. Harron’s adaptation is certainly no afraid of blood and guts, often splattering actor Christian Bale with red dye. His name evokes an even more generic riff on “Norman Bates” from Psycho.

Horror movie quotes about endings serial#

After all, Bateman positions himself as a fan of serial killers like Ed Gein and Ted Bundy. Nevertheless, American Psycho borrows a certain amount of cinematic language from the slasher film. Even in prose, some of these sequences are too much, and putting them on screen would seem gratuitous and excessive even beyond the film’s celebration of gratuitous excess. To be fair, the decision to downplay some of the more graphic illustrations of Bateman’s monstrosity is a practical choice. This is perhaps more obvious in Ellis’ source novel, which is populated with grotesque details of Bateman’s murders that are left largely implied within Mary Harron’s cinematic adaptation. On the surface, American Psycho looks and feels a lot like a slasher story.

American Psycho unfolds in a world where nothing is real and nothing matters. Bateman confesses his crimes repeatedly and openly, only for colleagues to laugh it off as a joke or shift the conversation or reveal that they weren’t really listening. Bateman spends the entirety of the book and movie openly boasting and threatening characters with death and dismemberment, only for everybody involved to remain either willfully or accidentally ignorant of what Bateman claims to be. During his presidential campaign, Trump famously boasted, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” It’s an argument that has become worryingly central to Trump’s campaign, with even his lawyers advancing the argument that he couldn’t be prosecuted for it as part of an argument over his tax returns.Īmerican Psycho makes a similar argument about its protagonist. Ironically, that weird relationship has only deepened in the years since the novel was published and the film was released. Without ever being directly present in the film or the novel, Donald Trump haunts American Psycho. Later on, out at dinner in a low-rent restaurant, he tries to catch a colleague’s interest (and maybe his own) by asking, “Is that Ivana Trump?” “Is that Donald Trump’s car?” asks Bateman while riding with his fiancée in a taxi. Towards the end of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel, Bateman takes a moment to muse on Trump Tower, admiring it as it stands “tall, proudly gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight.” Throughout the film, Bateman and colleagues are obsessed with Trump. To be fair, the film signposts this strange relevance. 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.Īmerican Psycho is twenty years old, and somehow more relevant than ever. Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm followed by a final moisturizing protective lotion. I always use an after shave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then I apply an herb-mint facial masque which I leave on for 10 minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. In the shower I use a water activated gel cleanser, then a honey almond body scrub, and on the face an exfoliating gel scrub. After I remove the ice pack I use a deep pore cleanser lotion.

In the morning, if my face is a little puffy, I’ll put on an ice pack while doing my stomach crunches. I believe in taking care of myself, and a balanced diet and a rigorous exercise routine.