* CAUTION – SPOILER ALERT *

Books are always better than their movie counterparts. Clichéd but true, with the arguable exception of Fight Club. Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho is no different, managing even to overshadow a flawless realisation by Christian Bale. Patrick Bateman is a super-wealthy NYC investment banker whose misanthropic and psychopathic tendencies gradually escalate and bubble to the surface, yet acquaintances and society in general fail to acknowledge the gratuitous and obvious carnage.

Although the majority of the script has been extracted from the novel, the original text is far less accessible and comical than the movie. The sex scenes and murders are more complex, barbaric and graphic – the worst involving torture with a starved, feral rat. The film implies Bateman’s descent to homicidal insanity is relatively recent, triggered by his shallow and meaningless yuppie lifestyle, whereas the book documents a decade-long killing spree ongoing since Harvard.

Such a distinction may seem trivial but has inferences for the much-debated interpretation of the ending – was Bateman really a serial killer or did he imagine the whole violent episode?

The quintessential chainsaw-stairwell scene wasn't actually in the book

My personal opinion is yes, he did kill all those people. Despite the extent and duration of his unchallenged rampage contradicting this and supporting the argument that Bateman is hallucinating, the alternative is more intriguing. The plot’s pivotal theme is identity or lack thereof. In such a superficial, homogenous era and environment, everybody looks like everybody else and is therefore interchangeable. Nobody knows themselves and thus nobody knows anybody else. Throughout the story characters misidentify one another, restaurants, even office buildings. The resultant anonymity means either the crimes cannot be pinned on Bateman as he is indistinguishable from his peers or simply his victims are equally indistinguishable and so go unmissed. I feel this stance is perfectly illustrated by the following poetic extract from both the book and movie:

“…there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, 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. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? 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—and I have countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed—and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing….”

However the plot is deliberately ambiguous and open to interpretation. Per IMDB: In each scene with Detective Donald Kimble (Willem Defoe), writer/director Mary Harron asked Defoe to portray his character three different ways: 1) Kimble knew Patrick Bateman killed Paul Allen, 2) Kimble didn’t know Bateman killed Allen, and 3) Kimble wasn’t sure if Bateman killed Allen. Harron would then edit the takes together, giving the audience an unsure vibe of what Detective Kimble thought of Bateman.