8 Directors Who Have The Worst Takes About Their Own Movie Endings
5. Mary Harron Doesn't Think It Was All In Bateman's Head - American Psycho
For the longest time, a great many fans found themselves coming away from Mary Harron's unsettling American Psycho slice of horror feeling as though the acts they'd just witness being performed by the chilling Patrick Bateman may have actually been a figment of the New York investment banker's imagination all along.
This theory certainly adds a new dimension to the horrific murders Bateman is seen executing throughout the 2000 flick's run-time. But the ambiguity of the film's closing scene, which sees the apparent serial killer told that a colleague recently had dinner with a Paul Allen he was sure he'd murdered, wasn't actually designed to leave audiences believing these many horrendous acts could've been in Bateman's head all along.
As the film's director Harron would explain when discussing her frustration at folks walking away from the experience convinced that they'd just been delivered a twist "it was all a dream" conclusion:
"One thing I think is a failure on my part is people keep coming out of the film thinking that it's all a dream, and I never intended that. All I wanted was to be ambiguous in the way that the book was. I think it's a failure of mine in the final scene because I just got the emphasis wrong. I should have left it more open ended. It makes it look like it was all in his head, and as far as I'm concerned, it's not."
Much to the annoyance of those who have spent many hours debating the contrary then, in Harron's mind, Christian Bale's unsettling Bateman is very much the serial killer her flick portrays him to be.