Does Patrick Bateman actually kill everyone at the end of ‘American Psycho’?
For a movie based on a novel deemed unfilmable, one that a filmmaker directed the studio didn’t want who fought for an actor the executives didn’t want to hire as the lead, American Psycho turned out to be in perfect hands with Mary Harron and Christian Bale leading the charge.
Harron famously cast Bale to begin with, only for both of them to be replaced by Oliver Stone and Leonardo DiCaprio respectively, which came full circle when that pairing dropped out and things returned to the way they were clearly supposed to be.
A rousing success at the box office that recouped its budget almost five times over from cinemas, American Psycho found a second lease of life as a cult classic on home video, even if there are far too many people who derived the entirely wrong idea from the film and treated Patrick Bateman as a hero to be worshipped.
It’s best not to talk about the Mila Kunis-fronted sequel and pretend it doesn’t exist, with American Psycho standing on its own merits as a searing and jet-black psychological serial killer horror comedy that places capitalism, consumerism, and toxic masculinity right in its crosshairs.
What is American Psycho about?
Unfolding in 1987, New York City professional Patrick Bateman is the living embodiment of the yuppie movement. Handsome, wealthy, and wearing the crispest possible suits to his day job as an investment banker, he’s driven by his desire to project financial and societal superiority to his personal and professional circles, even though he hates them both equally.
As an outlet for his barely controlled rage, Bateman also moonlights as a serial killer, one who takes immense pleasure in brutally murdering anyone who crosses his path. Homeless people, co-workers, sex workers, the Huey Lewis and the News fan, shows no preference.
What happens at the end of American Psycho?
Suspension of disbelief is required, but up until the finale of American Psycho, it’s assumed that Bateman is living out his twisted fantasies by dishing out remorseless retribution by way of bloody murder. However, once an ATM asks him to feed it a stray cat, things take a turn for the ambiguous.
The entire narrative unfolds from his perspective, raising the question over whether or not he’s a reliable narrator. Clearly, the man is out of his mind, but does that mean he hasn’t actually murdered anybody? Even he isn’t sure, which only serves to muddy the waters further.
When a woman accosts him for preparing to obey the ATM’s wishes, he shoots her, runs away, survives a shootout with the police that claims several lives, and manages to flee unscathed and not in handcuffs. From here up until the final voiceover, it’s never quite clear where the lines between reality and fantasy started to blur, if they even did at all.
After escaping the authorities, he confesses all of his crimes to his lawyer, revealing there’s even evidence of the atrocities he’s committed. He returns to the scene where he murdered Jared Leto’s Paul Allen, only to discover the apartment – that was supposed to be filled with the stench of death – is in pristine condition and up for sale.
Bateman even calls his assistant, who stumbles upon his perversions by discovering an appointment book covered in lewd drawings of mutilated women. He goes so far as to tell Stephen Bogaert’s Harold Carnes in a packed Harry’s Bar that he killed everyone he says he did, too, before Harold drops the bombshell that he had dinner with Allen in London not more than a few days ago.
Did Patrick Bateman actually kill anyone?
His chilling final monologue has Bateman state, “My crimes have gone unpunished”, “my punishment continues to elude me”, and “my confession has meant nothing”, but was the entire thing all in his head? As open-ended as it seemed, Harron insists it wasn’t supposed to be that way.
Calling the ending “a failure on my part” to Charlie Rose, the filmmaker “never intended” for audiences to think American Psycho were the unhinged fantasies and wish-fulfillment wanderings of a deranged mind: “It makes it look like it was all in his head, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s not”.
Bateman may not have committed the dozens upon dozens of murders he claimed, and it’s up for debate if he even killed Paul Allen, but based on how grounded and realistic the demise of Reg E. Cathey’s homeless man is at the very least, he killed one person for sure and undoubtedly several more after that before his imagination started to run wild.
