What the fuck happened in American Psycho?

What the fuck happened in American Psycho?
Did Bateman imagine killing everyone, or did he imagine killing everyone but Allen; who he had a hate great enough for to imagine the whole ordeal in clarity. Or did his lawyer just mistake the person he had lunch with for Allen?
I know I'm a flifty newfag, but I need theories.

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there isn't just one answer dude. welcome to artistic ambiguity

B-b-but I need closure. What does the majority of Sup Forums believe at the least?

what nice start of numbers

I believe in these digits Tbh

you just got answer to your another question as well. read book also it pretty good written

They fucked up the ending so badly that the director had to come out and explain what happened in an interview

I believe he did not commit a single murder, and he was suffering severe delusion. Best evidence of this is at the start where he was swearing at the bartender but, it turned out it was in his head.

that's it i'm 100% certain this is a meme and you don't actually think anything was a "metaphor" or a hallucination

He more than likely didnt kill anyone.

The point of the movie is that he and his "friends" were indistinguishable.

A real for reals serial killer infiltrated his click and killed people then bateman convinced himself he did it because he was trying to recobcile his shattered psyche.

So no he didnt do it he just wanted to be cool.

He killed them all. The guy who said "I just talked to so-and-so" was always getting people confused with said so-and-so, including Bateman himself earlier in the film. He was probably thinking of someone else, so the breaking-down confession was wasted catharsis and he didn't have to vent again. He got away with it all

he was also seen taking medication throughout the film, which is probably to treat his mental condition.

There is also the moment towards the end where looked at his gun is disbelief as to how it could cause such devastation.

checked.

Read the book you plebs. He killed them. He and his rich soulless buddies always got each other mixed up. Fuck people are stupid.

Another thing to clear up. The real estate agent at the end is what I think fucks with people and has created this preposterous debate.
>be real estate agent in crazy expensive 1980s yuppie NYC
>find piles of mutilated bodies
>clean them up and sell the place because reporting the murders would destroy the property value.
Greed, people.

if you're intellectual elite, it's a black comedy/ commentary on american life

a card's typeface isn't really more important than a murder

unless it is

i mean you can consider the movie as a stand-alone entity, but at the beginning of the book he quotes notes from the underground, something along the lines of: "because this person can possibly exist in the world, then they do." so in my understanding, ellis is saying that bateman did kill people. it doesn't make sense for him to include this quote and have the character not actually murder anyone.

still got the digits, playah!

In cases such as this, where we see something happen on screen, you should assume it happened unless there is clear evidence it did not.

The bartender just couldn't hear him over the music desu. He still said he wanted to stab her and play with her blood out loud.

or there were never any bodies

or he could be saying its possible for a crazy person who hallucinates to exist in that world.

Batman can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality.
He's not really buff, he didn't do those things.

Yes he is really buff. They all look the same, that's why they all get confused.

Did you not notice the fresh paint and paint rollers? The agent tells him to leave and never come back in a very obvious "pretend like this never happened" tone. Read the book. It explains this thoroughly.

Nice dubs.
None of the killings are real, but it doesn't matter.

I thought it was pretty clear he didn't do any of it

>TFW you realize how many people are confused by a very obvious ending.

I didn't take it that way. It's been a long time but there was a line like "Batman wouldn't do that, he's a beta dweeb cuck." so I thought that was just the image he has of himself.
I could give it another watch though. I haven't seen it since it was new if you don't count the 10 minutes I caught on TV the other day.

So only places that have been found full of bodies get fresh paint jobs? And who wouldn't tell that weirdo to leave? Thats what they call circumstantial evidence.

That's how I took it when I first saw it, like it's the 80s and everyone cares about money more than morality, but as time went by I started thinking more and more of it was in his head.

But hes saying it to his face and cant even tell its him. His opinion is worthless.

>i'm not gonna tell you my view but rest assured, i'm right and you're all stupid
Nice contribution

>implying there is a correct view

It's all in his head. America, his society, has turned him mad, but ultimately he's yet another drone, a slave that will never escape and be free except through his fantasies like every other good goy,

I just googled it.
The director said she fucked up the end.
It was never meant to be that ambiguous.
He did kill those people but he was going more and more nuts so everything was getting less realistic.

oh yea, and George Lucus intended to make all those changes from the start, even the ones he changed back again.

>implying authorial intent matters

I already elaborated on the real estate agent and he and his friends tendency to confuse each other with one another. Get triggered more, cuck.

He's a vapid, shallow, horrible person and so is everyone else except maybe his secretary and the gay guy who has a crush on him.

That lawyer guy gives zero fucks, doesn't know his name, and even if he did care it would obviously be in everyone's best interest to terminate that conversation immediately because he's about to break down and confess to a bunch of murders in a very public place.

The same is true for the realtor lady in the guy's apartment. Either he did or didn't murder a bunch of people, but regardless of what actually happened, she wants him gone before he sabotages the place. Apartments where murders are committed are bad for business. Even a rumor of some grisly murder is bad for her bottom line, so either way works

I think at least some of the murders were all in his head and he clearly gets worse as the film goes by.

I've read the book too. I'm sure much of what he did in the book was delusional. He's also an incredibly unreliable narrator and changes various details on a whim. He might be literally trolling you, the consumer, and not believe any of this.

8

>implying it doesn't

ITT: retards that never read the book and got confused by a movie directed by a woman who didn't know what she was doing


Bateman kills, deal with it.

>implying it does
>being a bookfag in a movie thread

literally kys yourself

Just fuck off already.

Most of what he did is in his head.

You don't have a 9mm and take out a fucking 1980s crownvic as if you had an RPG
ATMs don't say feed the cat
You can't just walk around shooting cops

Hookers and homeless people? Sure. But the dude was losing it by that point.

Go fuck yourself, bitch nigga

This. I really don't see how any of this is up to debate. He might have killed the first guy or MAYBE the hooker (I say this because she seemed more important to the viewer than everyone else Bateman killed and had the most character substance out of anyone in the film), but that's it.

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>I really don't see how any of this is up to debate
>He might have killed

You say he "might have" and then dont understand why its debated?

He "might have" killed all of them or none of them or any individual one or any combination.

Obvious violent fantasies. Bateman has no balls despite the posturing.

Obvious projecting. You have no balls despite the posturing.

People who are crazy never kill right?

He killed all the people.

The car blows up because the director is a woman and doesn't know how stupid that is.

The ATM saying "Feed the cat." is just showing how fucked up he is at this point.

You can just walk around shooting cops in a movie.

You guys act like this was a documentary when it was just a satirical piece on the white collar alpha male literally getting away with murder.

If you didn't get this your IQ might be below 90.

Also, in the book he did a lot more sickening things. The movie is like a PG13 version of the book.

If you want to believe that it's just in his head. Go ahead, I won't stop you. The director of the movie and the author of the book have been outspoken that he really killed all those people because otherwise the commentary of him caring more about shallow things like business cards than human life would be lost.

Did he imagine the dubs or were they real?

People who are crazy never hallucinate right?

He imagined killing all the people.

The car blows up because its his imagination.

The ATM saying "Feed the cat." is just showing that hes hallucinating.

You can just walk around shooting cops in your imagination.

You guys act like this was a documentary when it was just a satirical piece on the white collar alpha male literally imagining being a murderer.

If you didn't get this your IQ might be below 80.

Also, the book is a book, not a movie. He did a lot more sickening things in the book but thats not really relevant to the movie in any way. The movie is like a PG13 version of the book.

If you want to believe that it's real. Go ahead, I won't stop you. The director of the movie and the author of the book have opinions, but these are also completely irrelevant to the film, which is a self contained unit.

They were real.

nice thread but check em

>Read the book you plebs. He killed them.

Except the book makes it even more ambigious if he killed them than the movie you retard

its called magic realism you massive plebs

I bet you hated Superman's dad showing up on the mountain in BvS

Didn't read lol


Check them.

check'em

My theory is that the killings were all fantasies he was having. The film was fairly upfront with the fact that it was a satire of that type of lifestyle. And each of the killing fantasies seem to come from the mindset of that lifestyle (hatred and distrust of the poor, petty competitiveness, seeing women as objects etc)

He couldn't finish the fantasy of killing his secretary because of an intrusive thought. It was disrupted when he began seeing her as human. Same with the gay co-worker.

The final monologue at the end of the movie is a lamentation that, even though the killings weren't real, the feelings and attitudes behind them still remain. And because he doesn't act on them, his poisonous attitudes and fantasies will continue to fester in his mind. He won't be punished. He won't learn anything.

The killings were real, there is evidence of that throughout the movie. If the killings weren't real that would lessen the impact of the point of the film which is to show the narcissism of the characters and how they are easily interchanged.
youtu.be/ZjV3aQHxlP4#t=2m56s

I chose to believe that Bateman did commit at least some of the murders. I personally think it fits with the message of the book and movie better if he actually was a murderer. The ambiguity of the ending is due to the realisation that nothing he did mattered. He could have killed just one or a hundred yuppies, prostitutes and degenerates but in a society so obsessed with vanity and hedonism everyone loses their individuality. The satirization of 80s corporate America was meant to show that yuppie culture ended with a creation of identical people and even if they all disappeared no one would blink an eye. This eventually bleeds into Bateman's own character as he becomes more and more distanced from himself, essentially he starts to blend in with all the people he works with and totally loses any shred of his identity. If Bateman imagined everything then the message of the book is that living like an asshole drives you crazy but if he actually kills people then it has greater meaning. But this is totally subjective of course.

>It was disrupted when he began seeing her as human. Same with the gay co-worker
He didn't kill the gay co-worker because he turned around and kissed his hand. Patrick, being the homophobe he is then had to go wash his hands

>But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing

I think you missed the point if you think there is a point.

The surreal sequence isn't most of the movie, dingus.

But that's much less meaningful if he didn't kill anyone. That ending is about how there's no justice in the vapid yuppie culture he lives in, so he goes unpunished and doesn't even get the relief of being found out for his murders.

bateman killed most of the people. Probably not the cops, and he definitely did not kill paul allen.

This is my favourite Christian Bale movie.

>No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling.

Stop trying to extract new knowledge from his telling, there is no deeper meaning.

No deeper meaning can be extracted from him confessing his murders, because he's living in an amoral society, he doesn't get any judgement out of it.

Why would a white collar alpha imagining being a murderer be satirical? What is it satirising? See, the problem with hallucination fags like you is that you're retarded. You treat all films like puzzles or magic tricks that are trying to test you because you grew up on L O S T and the comedic gruel that is mock the week and cracked.com. You genuinely think that the conceit, or twist, that it was all "in their heads" or "all a dream" - a plot device most commonly associated with early learning reading material, I might add - somehow adds depth to the film, that the idea that the plot is somehow a metaphorical imagining of the character' subconscious is somehow profound, the height of existential philosophising. It's because you have little to no imagination yourself and are frankly lacking in both emotional and intellectual understanding.

To prove this, I present to you the following conundrum. If in American Psycho the murders are all hallucinated, what in your opinion is the theme or message of the movie?

I think he just went nuts and it was all in his head. When the secretary found his notebook full of fucked up sketches the movie made it clear he was just going crazy.

(dubs)
It unironically is. He fucking nails the performance.

Mine too

>what in your opinion is the theme or message of the movie?
Whats yours?

The book is very clear that he didn't kill anyone you illiterate dumb dumb.

>If the killings weren't real that would lessen the impact of the point

You people know this whole "nobody cares because everyone is a self-absorbed 80s yuppie" maybe just one of the intents of the author? The point is that neither the reader/viewer NOR Bateman in the end know what was real and what wasn't so the reader gets put in the same situation of paranoia, psychosis, dread, uncertainty etc. than Patrick. As good as this whole criticism of bland yuppie culture was being put in Bateman's position/mind is a more strong and lasting note than that flat and overused "yuppies suck" message. The point isn't even if it was real or not, the point is that after all the mayhem Bateman caused or imagined he doesn't have any sort of epiphany, justice or resolve and stays stuck in his own personal hell

are these dubs real?

The book is ambigious about it. Only towards the end when the murders become more frequent, grisly and over the top and he stops trying to hide them or the corpses you start to think that even in 80s New York someone is bound to notice. Some may have happened but not all of it

...

...

At the end of the book he has gore all over his apartment and the maid is just walking around cleaning like it isn't there at all and Patrick can't understand why she doesn't see it

Why is it less meaningful if he didn't kill anyone? He doesn't even know if he killed anyone himself.

But that's incredibly shallow.

The same as the murders camp. The whole point of the film is that in high capitalism/ consumerism, life is cheap, and personal identity is inextricable from what we own and what we buy - we are what we wear. We are our brands. We live in a nihilistic, meaningless vacuum in which relationships are shallow and disposable and people are indistinguishable from products or objects.

Okay yeah because the ATM thing and blowing up the car must have happened.

You are just really fucking dense, aren't you? The book does not matter. The script is what matters. Faggots like you waving the books around in peoples' faces is what's wrong with any attempts at amateur film interpretation.

It's just as likely he hallucinated killing the people and he really only killed one person. I find it more likely that he went nuts and imagined killing everyone because I doubt he got away from the cops so easily.

I agree that that is one of the points of the film.
But those points would still be effectively made if he hallucinated all the murders.

But how unlikely is it that the cops would've pulled up immediately with their lights flashing the second he shoots the lady in the middle of the night in a deserted alleyway? And that when he runs one road over that there would already be two other cop cars parked and blocking off the road waiting for him?
I think that his inability to kill his secretary, and then his anger at being unable to kill the gay guy are what start to drive him insane, and that he stops taking his meds and has this big fantasy sequence about getting caught (which some little part of him craves) ending in him calling the lawyer to confess it all. Then in the morning he's seen gobbling down a bunch of his meds, which also puts him out of it and makes him not himself for the scene with the realiter and his lawyer; both of which I think he would've handled better and with more confidence if he wasn't on a huge dose of his meds.

For me the point of the film is in the ambiguity of it. Weather he killed them or not is left unrevealed to make the point that it really doesn't matter one way of the other.

Like you say "in high capitalism/ consumerism, life is cheap". No one cares if hes a murderer or not, they only care if he can get a reservation at Dorsia.

In the book it pretty explicitly says he killed them.

Their society of yuppies is so self-absorbed nobody even noticed Bateman killed them.

>tfw never have their amazing sea urchin cerviche

Quote please.

Do you think Bateman imagined these dubs?