10 Horror Movie Scenes Everyone Always Gets Wrong
8. Patrick Didn't Imagine Killing People - American Psycho
What Everyone Thinks
American Psycho ends on a much-debated note as Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) appears to leave a voicemail message to his lawyer, confessing to his rampage of murder and violence.
The next day, however, the lawyer scarcely recognises Batman and laughs off his confession as a joke, while insisting that one of his claimed murder victims, Paul Allen (Jared Leto), is very much alive.
To many, this suggests that Bateman never actually killed anyone, and that much of the movie has simply been the demented fantasy of a Wall Street psychopath.
Why It's Wrong
This has been clarified by both director Mary Harron and writer Guinevere Turner, with the latter asserting that Patrick really did kill all those people, but that we're seeing it through his own romanticised, glamorised perspective. In reality, he's likely not quite as slick or well-coiffed as we're led to believe.
On the film's DVD commentary, Harron added that the ending isn't meant to imply Bateman is imagining everything, but simply that everyone in Wall Street is so thoroughly self-obsessed that they can't keep track of one another.
The lawyer presumably confused Paul Allen with one of the thousands of suited-up investment bankers working in New York, and that soulless anonymity is also what allowed Bateman to conduct his after-hours work without anyone noticing or caring.