A sharp test case for whether satire gets stronger when it is funny, stylish, and morally poisonous at the same time.
American Psycho lasts because Mary Harron never forces a choice between social critique and sick joke. The movie turns status signaling, male vanity, and luxury consumption into a horror grammar, then leaves the audience stuck inside a world too empty to tell monstrosity from branding noise.
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Patrick Bateman moves through restaurants, business cards, skin routines, and murder fantasies with the same dead showroom smile. American Psycho belongs on Cinema One because Mary Harron turns Wall Street masculinity into horror-comedy evidence: the monster is not hidden under the suit; the suit is part of the monster.
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