10 Horror Movie Scenes You Didn’t Realise Were Tricking You

I am of the opinion that every performance Willem Dafoe gives is a work of art. His part in American Psycho is no exception, where he plays private investigator Donald Kimball.

Kimball is hired to look into the disappearance of one of killer Patrick Bateman’s victims. There are three vital interview scenes throughout the film, where Dafoe seems to switch erratically between levels of suspicion. It’s confusing and jarring and can leave you wondering, “what am I missing here? What is going on?” And that is for good reason!

This little trick was genius on the part of director Mary Hannon, who had Dafoe perform each of these scenes three times. For each take she instructed him to perform differently: once with certainty that Bateman was the killer, once with medium suspicion and once as if he was totally unaware of Bateman’s true nature and involvement.

In the edit these performances were cut together to keep you on your toes, keep the audience in a confused state as to the reality they were taking in. It’s not that Dafoe was giving an inconsistent, janky performance, or that you just weren’t understanding what you were seeing, it was a super clever little directing trick from Hannon.