the American Psycho Movie is Stank.

 The American Psycho movie, in terms of just being a movie, isn’t necessarily bad by itself, but in terms of being a movie adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ book, it sucks massive balls. If you ask literally anyone about how they felt reading the book they’ll immediately tell you how disturbing it was, because it is, but if you compare that to the feeling you get from watching the movie, it just isn’t the same. And it’s not because of the gore or anything, though the movie definitely did tone down the gore and sex scenes a shit ton, the book was really overly descriptive with quite literally everything he talks about. But that wasn’t what was crucially missing from the movie because you can take scenes like that out and still have the same product, just a more censored version, but there was some core aspect missing from the movie and it took me a long time to figure out exactly what it was, but I finally did. To put it in simple terms: the movie never portrays Patrick Bateman as a human being. 

 A main part of Patrick's character is the fact that he’s literally a joke. His entire character is a satirical comedy routine that was made to poke fun at hyper-masculinity and these Wall Street type jobs and all this shit so everything he does is overly absurd. He is best described as an alien that is trying to impose himself into human society and tries to copy their behavior to fit in which you can see in the way his mannerisms, speech patterns, and behaviors are portrayed. But when you have a character that is only ever a joke and simultaneously commits these heinous crimes all the time, you can never really empathize with him unless there’s something actually fucking wrong with you. And watching the movie, there is never a real moment where you can empathize with him due to this unless you’re in a state of delusion. And that’s the problem because, in the book, the actual disturbing aspect was you’d have these random scenes where he would show genuine, vulnerable human emotions which gives you something that you can relate to which leads to this juxtaposition that makes it so unsettling to read. Because you’ll have this person going through these conflicts like being super nervous and wanting to impress the first girl he ever loved or being jealous of his younger brother for possibly being more successful than him and feeling like a failure and all these things that, as actual people, you can relate to in one way or another and then pairing it back with this alien, vile person doing some of the most foul shit physically possible. And, for me at least, that fucked me up; American Psycho is probably the only book that after reading it I actually had the conscious thought to myself that I wanted to be a better person because I felt like I was a shitty person relating and empathizing to this guy who in ever right you never should relate and empathize to. And it is such an intricate part of the book that I’ve never been able to find replicated in anything else I’ve ever read nor seen which is why it’s so frustrating that the movie threw that out like it was nothing. 

 The whole reason I’m even mad about the movie in the first place is that it clearly is directly using the book. Nearly every line in the movie is word-for-word what is said in the book, most of the scenes properly replicate the scenes from the book, it’s not like Mary Harron didn’t read the book, she clearly did, she just chose to specifically throw all these significant scenes out. And I get to a degree why she did it, I’ve seen plenty of interviews from her explaining her direction for the film and how she wanted to specifically lean into the satire as what can be inferred as a way to further distance viewers from perceiving Patrick as a “cool serial killer.” That’s specifically why she chose Christian Bale to play him; he was the only actor that auditioned who played him as this absurdist character and didn’t take him seriously at all. In fact, I think Christian Bale was a near perfect Patrick Bateman in the scenes he did play. He clearly read the book, too. But in this effort to distance the movie from any semblance of being a “cool serial killer” film, she took out any scene where he wasn’t just a joke leading back around to the main problem where she took it from being a disturbing dark comedy to just a comedy. I think the most reprehensible example of this is the butchering of, what I’d consider the most important chapter in the entire book, End of the 1980s. It’s the seventh-to-last chapter in the book and shows Patrick going out to lunch with his secretary, Jean, who he has begun to show more attention towards in the previous chapters. During their lunch, she finally verbally admits to Patrick that she’s in love with him and he immediately tells her that he’s seeing someone (which is a lie), but instead of letting her apologize and give up, he tells her that that shouldn’t stop her and if she really wants to be with him, or anyone really, she should commit to courting them. This also leads into him asking why she loves him resulting in the most important part of the entire book. I don’t want to butcher it, because I have and will again, so here is the entire, unedited section: 

 ‘"How many people in this world are like me? I ask again. "Do I really appear like that?

 "Patrick," she says. "I wouldn't lie." 

"No, of course you wouldn't... but I think that..." My turn to sigh, contemplatively. "I think... you know how they say no two snowflakes are ever alike?"

 She nods.

 "Well , I don't think that's true. I think a lot of snowflakes are alike... and I think a lot of people are alike too." 

She nods again, though I can tell she's very confused. 

"Appearances can be deceiving," I admit carefully. 

"No," she says, shaking her head, sure of herself for the first time. "I don't think they are deceiving. They're not." 

"Sometimes, Jean," I explain, "the lines separating appearances--what you see--and reality--what you don't--become, well, blurred."

 "That's not true," she insists. "That's simply not true." 

"Really?" I ask, smiling. 

"I didn't use to think so," she says. "Maybe ten years ago I didn't. But no I do." 

"What do you mean?" I ask interested. "You used to?"

 ...a flood of reality. I get an odd feeling that this is a crucial moment in my life and I'm startled by the suddenness of what I guess passes for an epiphany. There is nothing of value I can offer her. For the first time I see Jean as uninhibited; she seems stronger, less controllable, wanting to take me into a new and unfamiliar land-the dreaded uncertainty of a totally different world. I sense she wants to rearrange my life in a significant way--her eyes tell me this and though I see truth in them, I also know that one day, sometime very soon, she too will be locked in the rhythm of my insanity. All I have to do is keep silent about this and not bring it up--yet she weakens me, it's almost as if she's making the decision about who I am, and in my own stubborn, willful way I can admit to feeling a pang, something tightening inside, and before I can stop it I find myself almost dazzled and moved that I might have the capacity to accept, though not return, her love. I wonder if even now, right here in Nowheres, she can see the darkening clouds behind my eyes lifting. And though the coldness I have always felt leaves me, the numbness doesn't and probably never will. This relationship will probably lead to nothing... this didn't change anything.

 I imagine her smelling clean, like tea..." 

 To put it simply, American Psycho is Dante’s Inferno. Not only are the first and last words of the book “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE” in reference to the sign above the entrance to hell in Inferno, but the general events of the book are to be interpreted as Patrick descent through the rings of hell with the entire process of said decent restarting in a never-ending cycle of madness and depravity. But this section of the book in this one chapter shows something that, though somewhat worked towards in a weird, backwards sort of way, is something that is not only never seen before in the book, but ever in Patrick’s life. It shows the ability, even in the smallest amount, of him being able to change and break free from the cycle of the book. It shows that somewhere inside him there is a human being and that when these scenes where he does show vulnerable human emotions, they truly are genuine. It shows that, through whatever deep-rooted sense of humanity inside people, even the most vile, despicable people are capable of some level of redemption (though I don’t know how far Patrick could get there considering how heinous his crimes were, but that’s not my point here). It gives the story this weird sense of hopeful optimism that I don’t even know how to begin to properly describe and really changes the entire story in the process. Do you want to know what the movie does with this scene? It mashes it together with a previous scene where Patrick has a model over and tells her to leave because “he’ll only hurt her” and inserts Jean into the scene instead of the model, adding pieces of dialogue from End of the 1980s. The actual rage this filled me with the first time I saw this in the movie sent me into an actual fit of physical anger. 

 In all of this, I’m not saying that movies need to be exact replicas of the book they’re based on (though I think that’s preferable). There are plenty of movies that do this properly as a way to present the movie in a more digestible way or enhance its themes/story elements. A great example of this is Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh; as much as I liked the book, it was a nightmare to read. It’s written in a Scottish dialect, as in phonetically how it sounds is how it’s written down, and has a different, unlabeled narrator each chapter where many times the narrator will exist in that chapter and then either never be brought up again, or only a few times afterwards. A lot of understanding the book comes from inferring and guessing because so much is vaguely presented. Danny Boyle, the movie’s director, did not write the script like that, thankfully. He made it so only Renton narrated, combining characters so instead of juggling 40+ characters there was only about 10-15, and he took it from being a disjointed anthology to following a basic rise-and-fall style story path. I whole-heartedly believe if he had written it in the exact same fashion as the book it would have been hell to read and a box-office failure and that the change to the story was, in fact, necessary to the movie. The reason this is, though, is because the main story, themes, morals, etc. were all still fully presented in the movie regardless of these changes and censorship. I can not say the same for American Psycho. 

 At the end of the day, American Psycho isn’t a bad movie on its own. The problem is it just isn’t a good representation of the book in its actual lasting effect and presentation. It doesn’t have that same special feeling, that intricate thing that makes it so different from every other book. It’s just a dark comedy. Patrick Bateman is only ever a satirical jab. And it never lives up to the book or anywhere near it. It’s just disappointing.

TLDR: When I see the purple M&M I understand exactly how Patrick felt seeing a hooker alone on the side of the street at night.