10 Screen Villains Who Succeeded, With Genuinely Terrible Consequences

6. Patrick Bateman in American Psycho

Patrick Bateman didn€™t really €œwin€ in American Psycho in any conventional sense of the word, but getting away scot-free with a string of bloody outrages without anyone even noticing probably counts as some sort of twisted achievement, even as it€™s caused by the general apathy of society rather than any diabolical brilliance on Bateman€™s part. In Bateman€™s demented little world, getting caught and denounced as a murderer would actually be more of a victory, as it would finally snap him out of an endless cycle of excruciating upper-class trivia and existential angst. The end of American Psycho is terrifying in both book and film, because there is no real conclusion or relief. Bateman€™s pointless existence just continues endlessly, a glossy monotony of expensive shopping and undiscovered corpses. The fact that one man is able to conceal his rage-driven lunacy so easily, with his victims so inter-changeable that no one seems to truly miss them, is a grim satire of American upper-class culture.
 
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