Signed Mary Herron and released 23 years ago in cinemas, this shock thriller is about to leave netflix. So it’s the last weekend to (re)discover American Psycho beforeit will be withdrawn from the catalog on January 30, 2023. As a reminder, the film features Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), a man who has everything of a golden-boy. Always elegant and distinguished, he earns a lot of money and surrounds himself with all the symbols of success. But behind this impeccable appearance hides darkness itself. Sheltered in his overpriced apartment, Patrick Bateman is a veritable psychopath who kills, beheads, cuts his throat and rapes. After killing tramps, prostitutes, models, he attacks his main rival, his colleague Paul Allen. Methodical and sure of himself, he always eludes Inspector Donald Kimball (Willem Dafoe). Whether American Psycho is now considered a classic, you should know that its end did not please its director so much.
Director Mary Herron deeply regrets the end of her film American Psycho
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As a reminder, at the end of the film, Patrick Bateman confesses to multiple murders, in particular that of his colleague and rival, Paul Allen (played brilliantly by Jared Leto), but the killer is not taken seriously. Many spectators then thought that all this was only in the head of the golden-boy. In an interview with Charlie Rose, the Canadian filmmaker admitted to regretting his end, misunderstood by a large part of the public. “I think I missed that aspect, because everyone walks out of the movie thinking it was a dream, it was all in their head“, she lamented. “But i never meant to show that… i think i missed the ending if the audience understands the reverse. I should have done a more open sequence. We have the impression that everything happened in his head, but not at all!“
A highly criticized sequel
Although the ending was misunderstood by audiences, that didn’t stop the film from being a critical and commercial success. More than twenty years after its release, American Psycho is now considered a classic of cinema. Its success has also led to the development of a sequel, American Psycho 2. A film featuring Mila Kunis as Rachael Newman, a student who survived an assault by serial killer Patrick Bateman. Since meeting the psychopath, the young woman has been very interested in criminal stories. Wishing to become the assistant of one of her professors in criminology, a former FBI profiler, she will not let anyone get in her way. Unlike the first opus with Christian Bale, the second part did not meet the expected success and was presented as a sequel “poorby the American press.
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Article written in collaboration with 6Média
