American Psycho Movie Review (2024)

American Psycho (2000) follows Patrick Bateman, a socially obsessed and psychotic Wall Street businessman who ever so easily loses his grip on self control. The film is very mature and very graphic in every single category presented. The film has violence which, although not particularly graphic onscreen, can be very disturbing depending on the scene, as a lot of the violence is sexually derived and against women. The sexual content of the film is very graphic (depending on where you watch the film), on the HBO MAX version of the film, which is uncut and unrated despite reading so, the threesome scene is prolonged and explicit in nudity. There are several sex scenes in the film no matter the way you watch. There is brief images of drug use (cocaine) and lots of references and dialogue relating to drugs along with themes of drug abuse.VIOLENCE: SEVEREThere are a couple scenes where Patrick talks to women on the street and following scenes imply he killed them. In one of these scenes we see blood stained sheets, in another a strand of hair he took from one of the girls.A completely innocent and desperate homeless man is repeatedly stabbed in the stomach before his dog is stomped and kicked and killed as well. We hear yelping and the scene is quite distressing yet not graphic visually (like most other scenes) however this being the first real scene of violence is surprising.A man, who is clearly drunk and oblivious, is viscously killed with an axe. The killer swings the axe down and blood sprays all over his face (the victim isn’t shown), before he pushes the axe out and blood spills all over the floor. The man then repeatedly keeps slamming his axe down onto the camera spraying blood all over the side of his face before he sits down and smokes a cigar next to the dead body, which is shown slightly out of focus. The impact of the axe is never shown, and the scene isn’t graphic but very, very bloody. He drags the corpse out of the apartment in a bag. After a night of sex, two girls ask to leave the man who payed them (as they are prostitutes) the man says no and that he isn’t done with them. He removes a coat hanger from a compartment and the scene cuts to the women with blood gashes and marks all over their backs and faces with them bleeding profusely as they leave scared. Later one of the women says she needed surgery after the abuse. This is one of the most truly disturbing scenes of the film.During sex, a man performs oral sex on a woman under covers (the actual sex act is shown briefly, but graphically) before the moans of pleasure turn into screaming and blood begins to soak the bed covers. The man emerges from underneath with blood all over his mouth (implying he bit her vagin* or body) he gets up fully nude and covered in blood, grabs a chainsaw and chases after a prostitute in his apartment. She runs from room to room discovering dead and severed bodies in closets and on the floors. Severed heads and limbs are shown with blood caking the walls as the woman runs from the man with a chainsaw. The man catches the woman in a room with a dead naked woman on the floor but she kicks and bites him, he curses at her and she runs down a stairwell. The man then drops the chainsaw down the stairwell onto her. The chainsaw drops onto her body and it is shown stabbed into her back with blood pooled all over the floor below her. This scene is incredibly intense and very disturbing and graphic.A severed head of a woman is shown in a fridge. Brief and not graphic. A man points a gun at a kitten. An elderly woman approaches and is shot in the chest and killed (not graphic). After the man begins shooting at cops, killing one and exploding cars killing others. The man walks into a building and shoots a desk clerk in the head spraying a small amount of blood on the wall behind him. He kills a janitor in a building and leaves. None of the violence or killing in this sequence is strong, graphic or heavy like the other scenes as it is over the top and brief. We see pre-school level illustrations of heinous violence. These show chopped up, severed and sexually violated women (for example, a shotgun shoved up a woman’s behind) however all of these images are brief but quite disturbing to look at due to their nature.LANGUAGE: SEVERELots of swearing. 28 uses of “f*ck”, uses of “b*tch”, “sh*t” and “f*ggot” as well.SEXUAL CONTENT: SEVEREA man’s buttocks are shown as he showers.A man’s pubic hair can be seen as he lays in a tanning bed, yet no nudity is shown.p*rnography is shown playing on a TV. It shows what appears to be two women having sex with each other and a woman riding on top of a man. Graphic nudity (but no genitals) are shown with bare breasts and buttocks as the woman rides up top the man and rubs up and fondles the other woman. Lots of moaning and images are shown but the sex is shown in the background and not focused on.In the most sexually explicit part of the film, a man orders a prostitute to clean her vagin* in the bath. She is shown doing this on her knees (no explicit nudity) before she is taken out to another prostitute. The other prostitute undresses and starts dancing suggestively while the man orders the other woman to get on her knees so that the other woman can “see her a**hole” and then orders the woman to “don’t just stare at it, eat it!”. The woman approaches the other woman and begins presumably doing this off camera before this cuts to a graphic threesome. The man is shown thrusting into both fully nude women from behind in doggystyle, then in several different positions shown in full graphic detail throughout. They thrust, get into different positions and mount on each other in several different explicit ways showing full nudity (however genitals are hard to make out due to the quick cuts), the man checks himself out in the mirror as he thrusts into the women, their legs and fully nude bodies including breasts are shown as he does this. The scene is prolonged (lasting 5+ minutes from the bathtub) and is very hard to watch and uncomfortable.A man and a woman are shown having sex on a bed. The man thrusts into the woman’s crotch as he finishes. The sex is shown with clothing obscuring graphic detail and the scene is brief and not as graphic as the other scenes.A man has sex with two women under the covers of a bed. He is then shown performing oral sex in the other woman under the covers, yet as the other woman gets out of the bed we see him very explicitly with his head in between the woman’s legs. It is then revealed he ate or bit the woman’s vagin* and killed her. The scene cuts to an intense chase through the halls where the man is fully nude (the chainsaw obscures his penis) where his buttocks are shown. Several naked corpses of women exposing breasts and buttocks are shown.Lots of sexual dialogue and references.Naked women are shown in pre-school level drawings. The women in these drab wings are violated in many ways. vagin*s and breasts are shown in these rough pictures, but they are brief.OVERALL: 17+

I have only seen this movie once, and once was enough! This movie is extremely gory with shocking and upsetting imagery and carnage. NO ONE under 18 should see this movie. There is nothing redeeming in it, since it is about a man who works at his father’s stock company and has an elegant home and doesn’t appear to have any kind of upsetting past that would make him so twisted on the inside. But at the end, it really makes you think if all of the violence actually happened, or if he never committed any of those murders and instead just had an extremely realistic imagination. Whatever the case, it is too unnerving and chilling to watch a second time. And it can really mess someone up if they do not take caution and watch it over and over again. This is strictly for adults only and frankly, I do not believe that it is for any age. There are a few scenes free of violence and peril, but the scenes that are violent and perilous are deeply disturbing and stay with you long after the movie finishes.