Hello, true believers, and welcome to You Aughta Know, a column dedicated to the decade that is now two full decades behind us. That’s right, it’s time to take a look back at one of the most overlooked decades of horror. Follow along as I do my best to chronologically explore the horror titles that made up the 2000s.
It was April 14th of the year 2000 and the nation was still actually interested in Santana thanks to the long lasting power of the smash hit smooth, so “Maria, Maria” found its way to the top of the charts. Americans were entranced with the one season wonder “Gossip” and sports video games dominated the market. In theaters, audiences were about to meet the man who would be Batman but this time in the guise of the world’s smarmiest sociopath, as Mary Harron’s American Psycho put Bret Easton Ellis on the map in a big way and a star studded cast helped take the film to a profit of nearly five times its budget.
American Psycho is an adaptation from a novel of the same name from post modern egotist Bret Easton Ellis, published nineteen years earlier. It follows Patrick Bateman, an elitist Manhattan investment banker who also happens to be a serial killer. Ellis’ original novel is a biting satire on the idea of American consumerism and superficiality and was critically acclaimed and lauded as “transgressive” while also gaining notoriety for its hyperviolence and objectification of women.
Film rights were purchased only a year after the release of the novel and Johnny Depp was attached early on. From that day forward, it went through a slew of changing hands from every level, directors and writers and leads, with a number of notable cinema folks attached. David Cronenberg and Stuart Gordon had both been tagged to direct but eventually dropped, Cronenberg specifically running into a number of differences with novelist Ellis who he had brought in to write the screen adaptation of the book. While the version we got is gangbusters, it’s a shame we didn’t get to see Cronenberg’s musical number to Barry Manilow’s “Daybreak” at the top of the World Trade Center. Body horror vet Norman Snider was brought in for a new script that also never found traction. Finally, in 1996 after a pre-sale attempt at Cannes, Mary Harron was attached to direct and write alongside screenwriter Guinevere Turner.
The road bumps didn’t end there. Even though Willem Dafoe and Reese Witherspoon were attached early on, studio executives fought back against Christian Bale for the lead role and pushed instead for on-the-rise actors Edward Norton or Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio was approached and bargained back and forth, attempting to replace Harron with Oliver Stone, Danny Boyle or Martin Scorsese. Stone even came in at one point and rewrote the script, axing much of the satire, but DiCaprio eventually left for The Beach instead. Thank goodness for us because this falling through led to the version we got instead.
A movie that was largely polarizing at launch, American Psycho now stands the test of time as an excellent, albeit pitch black, horror comedy. Watching it back now, it has a supernova of elements that combine to create an absolute classic. At first glance, just look at that damn cast. Bale wasn’t the superstar then that he is now and this was really the first look we got at the cinematic chameleon he would become. The oozing charm that rubs every one of us the wrong way but exists peacefully and perfectly in the realm of the film, Bale is a tour de force here as Patrick Bateman. Obsessed with how society views him based on surface level aesthetics and looks, Bateman flips on a switch to the maniacal offbeat Mister Hyde version of himself that is controlled by vanity and he treats people like the same material objects he is so determined to own. Bale’s chaotic calm while delivering monologues about pop culture musical sensations (notice how he never likes the artists until they become more mainstream and easy to digest), along with a few unforgettable kills notably involving an ax and a chainsaw, cemented him as a horror icon.
While Bale is the spotlight, the film is littered with excellent performances. Willem Dafoe is pitch perfect as the detective who may or may not be on the trail of Bale’s Bateman, his wide smile and twinkling eyes a wonderful distraction to even the viewer as to what he may or may not know. Jared Leto as conceited pretty boy Paul Allen, a more vapid version of Bateman himself, with Josh Lucas and Matt Ross as the other unlikable businessmen is a wonderful consortium of white privilege and ego, while Reese Witherspoon has a flitting turnabout as the waifish cheater. Top it off with an early Chloe Sevigny appearance and a quick Justin Theroux appearance and it’s a who’s who of talented and underseen actors, further proving Harron’s deft eye for talent.
But the script and Harron’s direction are the real highlights of the film. While Ellis wrote the novel with satire in mind, with a focus on the unreliable narrator, Harron really leans into the ideas that Ellis touches on and expounds on them, furthering beyond sociopathic consumerism and taking a plunging stab at toxic masculinity as well. Harron has a knack for being able to take hyperviolet acts and paint them with a sheen of dark humor, even going as far to play often with aesthetics on this front. Stark white and incredibly organized environments that suddenly become splashed and puddled with bright red blood while pop megahits play in the background and Bateman mansplains long before the term existed. It’s an articulate balancing act and somehow Harron nails it every step along the way with aid from the script help from Turner. The constant one-upping that the men barb each other with, playing nice, while driving them all to be more and more morally corrupt in the interest of success is brilliant. These men spend every waking moment thinking about how much better they look than their colleagues, their worth based on the watch on their wrist or the woman on their arm, and the whole time it’s making them the ugliest people in the world to us, the onlookers.
American Psycho was written as a look at the American ideology of “things” and Harron, alongside Bale’s excellent performance, is able to properly still convey that idea while also tackling new ideas that permeate on a greater scale and make it a truly timeless film. It stung back in 2000 but twenty years later, this movie absolutely kills.
