American Psycho: Satisfyingly Simple Satire

Patrick Bateman walks on sunshine (woooah-oh). But when the sun goes down, he runs. Specifically, he runs after a woman fleeing down his apartment hallway, her screams blending musically to him with the sound of the buzzing chainsaw in his hands. And weirdly enough, he spawned a million self-help videos for young men by doing it, whatever that might say about our modern American society. American Psycho is a disgusting, depraved little film that also happens to be a bitingly intelligent satire about the meaninglessness of our cultural pleasantries, among other things. A businessman by day and a serial killer by night, Bateman only keeps up appearances because his satirically overdone and wealthy society demands it. But something is wrong, something other than the fact that he's killed dozens of people. He's unravelling. He doesn't know why, but for obvious reasons, he can't stop into a clinic or a therapist's office to talk about it. Something in him needs to kill, another part of him needs to stop; an impasse to rival all others.

The satire of American Psycho is blunt, uncaringly forward. It cares about being as subtle as much as a congressman cares about doing the right thing, and the funny thing about its fastidiously indifferent nature is that it works. Bateman's internal, monotone, ridiculously literal monologues that expand and expound on the most rudimentary habits of the rich are both hilariously deadpan and harshly satirical, a whip-smart combo that never failed to make me chuckle. They're a non-stop onslaught of thinly-veiled and hilariously mean jabs at the top one percent from one they would call their own. This movie builds its entire identity on Bateman's ability to be a nonstop vending machine filled with satirical barbs, and in many ways, it works. Still, while it makes a strong first impression, American Psycho loses steam with time.

This movie is a one-trick pony. Its brash and often-funny satire makes for a great hook, but it becomes samey when given enough time to do so. One can only listen to a particular worldview or watch a person get hacked apart in a certain way long enough before becoming disinterested. Still, Christian Bale and his darkly funny work as Bateman carry this movie. At one point while watching American Psycho, I wrote this: it's not so much that I want to watch more of this movie so much as I want to watch more of him. His psychopathic habits come to be treated not so much as a reward Bateman looks forward to so much as a necessity he desperately wants to get away from. He doesn't want to hurt the select few coworkers and colleagues he's closest to, giving him some unexpected depth and making him more than a mere satirical statement.

In fact, Bateman isn't even a mere psychopath. He kills because something in him has to in the hopes of finding a coping mechanism to keep his very being from unravelling. And so, despite being largely one-dimensional, its insistence on being about a fascinating character makes American Psycho a fascinating movie in and of itself. His exercise routine, lavish lifestyle, luxurious dining, and utter indifference to all of it are even amusing, and his double life as a brutal, sadistic murderer is treated in such an ironically off-the-wall way that I occasionally found myself weirdly and even worryingly tickled by its sheer preposterousness. Of course, this blade cuts two ways. The very thing that made me keep watching it the first time will probably prevent me from watching it again. As I said, one can only watch a person be butchered in so many ways before tuning out. I imagine some of you will probably turn the radio off before the program is through.

A biting, coldly indifferent satire that doesn't know how to be more when it needs to, American Psycho had enough tricks in its bag to spawn an entire subculture of internet memes, nonetheless. Christian Bale's performance as a slowly-unravelling serial killer is marvelously chilling, and he elevated an otherwise simplistic and admittedly off-putting movie to a level it may not have deserved. The violence and sex in this movie are gratuitous, to the point where they're no longer attractive - which is probably the point. American Psycho ruthlessly cuts the upper echelons of American society into tiny pieces through brutal and pointed satire, to the extent that cold-blooded murder almost makes more sense than the lavish but hollow lifestyle of a businessman. And so, despite its many narrative flaws, most notably a sometimes-monotonous sense of repetition, there's something darkly satisfying about getting to watch a man entirely unencumbered by the shallow and faux-polite pleasantries of day-to-day interactions, free to say what he wants to say and, when the sun goes down, do what he needs to do. In this sense, its cult following is understandable. But its excess remains undeniable by any metric, and I can't find enough good things to say about American Psycho to justify watching it again. Patrick Bateman might be walking on sunshine, but the sky remains partially cloudy.

American Psycho - 6/10

Mark 4:21-23