was it all in patrick batemans head

Was it all in patrick batemans head

American Psycho 's ending makes a point of leaving its events ambiguous during the discomfiting, blackly comic finale, demystifying none of its strange and seemingly contradictory occurrences. American Psycho 's meaning is no less elusive. American Psycho sees a young Wall Street banker engage in increasingly shocking, grotesque misdeeds throughout the movie while still attending his day job and finding time for social events.

In the final scene of American Psycho , serial killer Patrick Bateman returns to the apartment of his earlier victim, the location of some of his worst crimes, and finds it to be clean and free of bodies leading audiences to wonder what happened to Paul Allen's apartment. Rather than being confronted with the expected bloodbath, he finds a mysterious realtor attempting to sell an immaculate property. If anything untoward has occurred there, somebody has gone to great lengths to remove any evidence. The question of what really happened in the American Psycho apartment scene is what ends the movie. The riddle of the American Psycho apartment scene may not present a binary choice between a conspiratorial clean-up and the murders not having taken place. There is no way of trusting that what happens in Bateman's head is an accurate interpretation of events.

Was it all in patrick batemans head

Bret Easton Ellis's opus American Psycho is a disturbed satire of wealth, greed and the Reaganite s and all they stood for — including the ear-splitting pop of Phil Collins and Huey Lewis. The film, like the book, focuses on a stockbroker with a penchant for serial killing — the now iconically infamous Patrick Bateman. In Mary Harron's adaptation of the controversial novel, Bateman is wholly embodied by Christian Bale in a star-making performance that stays faithful to Ellis's writing. Bateman begins his killing spree after his pride is wounded when he finds out Paul Allen Jared Leto , a colleague and rival, has a better quality business card than he does. His first victim is a homeless man and his dog before his egomania is wounded once again by Allen who mistakes him for another colleague. His fragile masculinity pushed beyond the pale, Bateman elaborately murders Allen in his own apartment while listening to Huey Lewis and the News before conducting a ruse that makes it look as if his fellow banker had flown to London. The killing of Allen sets in motion the investigation into the prominent and wealthy man's disappearance — and also seemingly Bateman's bloodlust, as he kills hordes of women in increasingly grisly ways. In an increasingly OTT sequence, police cars are blown up, police officers are slaughtered and Bateman eventually makes a phone call confession to his lawyer, owning up to murdering an undisclosed number of people somewhere between 20 and 40, with the film then entering its denouement. After Bateman confesses all of his crimes, he returns to Allen's apartment but finds no traces of any of his murders and the property put up for sale. Confused, he meets colleagues for lunch and bumps into his lawyer who took his confession for a practical joke. Bateman insists he actually did murder all of those people but the lawyer says he recently had lunch with Allen in London meaning the killing could never have taken place. In a distressed, trance-like state, Bateman returns to his lunch as his colleagues discuss Ronald Reagan, and narrates that he is in pain and that he wishes to inflict pain on others. Lots of people took the ambiguous ending to mean that Bateman never killed anyone and that it was all a fantasy or a dream, part of the stockbroker's twisted imagination to inflict pain on the world but is, as his lawyer puts it, too "square" to do so.

Thus, it's highly probable that his epic rampage wasn't quite so epic — if it even happened at all.

American Psycho is a classic dark comedy thriller starring Christian Bale in one of his most intense transformations as Patrick Batman, a young professional who also happens to be a serial killer with some rather dark tastes. American Psycho has been subject to universal acclaim for its portrayal of yuppie culture and consumerism, earning a cult following. While American Psycho has garnered a great deal of attention for its unique content and its portrayal of sociopaths, the ending of the film raises more questions than answers. While fans have come up with innumerable theories about the exact meaning of the ending of the film, it is, to this day, still open to interpretation. Some may enjoy the idea of coming up with theories of their own, others need a little more guidance. Here's our breakdown of the ending of American Psycho.

Ending Explained is a recurring series in which we explore the finales, secrets, and themes of interesting movies and shows, both new and old. In this entry, we look back at the ending of American Psycho. Such is the basis of American Psycho , which follows Patrick Bateman Christian Bale , your favorite handsome, charismatic, wealthy investment banker on Wall Street. Patrick blends into the bustling crowd of bankers. They all wear the same designer suit, don the same expensive haircut, and, most importantly, have eerily similar business cards. After all, Patrick is the only serial killer. Or is he? American Psycho is filled with ironic and borderline implausible misunderstandings.

Was it all in patrick batemans head

American Psycho 's ending makes a point of leaving its events ambiguous during the discomfiting, blackly comic finale, demystifying none of its strange and seemingly contradictory occurrences. American Psycho 's meaning is no less elusive. American Psycho sees a young Wall Street banker engage in increasingly shocking, grotesque misdeeds throughout the movie while still attending his day job and finding time for social events. Bateman begins committing more and more outrageous crimes, culminating in the bloody chainsaw slaughter of two women in an apartment complex and a shooting spree. As the American Psycho ending explained Bateman's crimes, he finally confesses everything to his lawyer twice — once via voicemail, and once in person , only for the lawyer to inform him Paul Allen isn't dead, but how Paul Allen is alive in American Psycho's ending remains a question. The ending showed that Bateman returns to his conversing colleagues like it is just a normal day — and it is in their dialogue where the key to understanding the American Psycho ending is hidden.

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Writers of the film chose to make it ambiguous, but intended for viewers to believe that Bateman committed the murders. Perhaps it is the return to Paul Allen's apartment that is purely a figment of Bateman's imagination. So when he shoots a car and it explodes, even he for a second is like "Huh? American Psycho Summary: A wealthy New York City investment banking executive, Patrick Bateman, hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies. To prepare for the role, Bale visited the NY stock exchange trading room floor and spoke with a few Wall Street bankers to gain an understanding of Bateman's mindset in his career. These things include the murders being messier and the hookers being " less hot. He's just going nuts. Bateman then steps in and says "It's not Paul Allen. Wolfe could be a nod to the Pulp Fiction character Winston Wolf, the legendary crime-scene cleaner who can wave a magic wand and make it all go away. Get exclusive film newsletters from our award-winning editorial team Sign up to get alerts for movie news, reviews and recommendations Email address Sign Up. Is he even really Patrick Bateman?

The cult classic horror film American Psycho garnered a lot of unanswered questions about the true meaning behind it. Or were all the crimes he had committed in his head? There were moments in American Psycho where Patrick partook in heinous acts of murdering people he deemed unworthy of existence.

We also already know from Detective Kimball that Allen was mistakenly identified in London by another individual, meaning the confused Carnes probably dined with someone else entirely. One evening early on in the film, Bateman encounters a random woman waiting to cross the road, and proceeds to creepily walk alongside her. While it can be argued that Bateman did actually murder his fair share of sex workers and homeless people, we can't be certain he's killed as many people as we're led to believe. In fact, Bateman doesn't even know how many people he's killed. That's why nobody believes Patrick's confession, as Paul Allen is still alive, and everybody is too self-obsessed to notice Paul Allen is missing or even notice his existence. The whole reason Bateman gets away with the murder of Paul Allen is because Allen, like others in the company, doesn't even know who he is. Though there's a lot of evidence of Paul's murder all being in Bateman's head, there's a clever theory that answers how is Paul Allen still alive in American Psycho. As such, his co-workers fastidiously ignore this, as if they too started to see the amoral elements of Wall Street, they would reconsider their entire life's choices. Runtime minutes. Runtime The bottom line: while it's clear some things that happen in the film are in Bateman's head like the Feed Me a Stray Cat scene , the murders actually happened. Maybe 40! One thing's clear, regardless: Bateman has a personality disorder, and he doesn't really try to hide it. After Bateman confesses all of his crimes, he returns to Allen's apartment but finds no traces of any of his murders and the property put up for sale.

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