10 Unanswered Movie Questions That Kept You Up All Night

9. Did Patrick Bateman Ever Actually Kill Anybody? - American Psycho (2000)

When Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) peeled back his herb-mint face mask to reveal his chainsaw-wielding proclivities as a serial killer in Mary Harron€™s American Psycho, the world froze. But by the end of the proceedings the audience is left questioning exactly how much of the story actually transpired, and how much of it was in the imagination of the main character. Frankly, there is little question that Patrick Bateman is an absolute lunatic, but the big question at the end of American Psycho is whether he is a serial killer, or just a sadist with extreme delusions and a vivid imagination. Most people seem to think that he was obviously imagining all this mayhem. After all, you can see all of his fantasies in his drawings and secret notebook. The crazy rampage at the end supports it being a fantasy even more (a random gun materialising in his coat, the ATM machine talking to him, the cop car randomly exploding and him somehow escaping the police, etc), but that doesn't speak of the rest of the film, which was so shocking for sitting on the borders of believability. Ultimately, it€™s clear that Harron wanted us to come away as dazed and confused as her protagonist, and to claim one theory over another definitely seems to be an exercise in futility.