‘American Psycho’ remains painfully relevant, misinterpreted 25 years later
“American Psycho” was released in theaters 25 years ago. Despite this, the film’s satirical portrayal of its protagonist remains relevant in the current political and social climate, our columnist writes. Abby Aggarwala | Contributing Illustrator
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One week after Donald Trump’s 2025 presidential inauguration, New York Magazine’s Brock Colyar wrote a recap of what they saw as a continuous celebration of conservatism.
Colyar noticed the staggering number of influencers in their 20s and 30s at these festivities as they began defining a new brand of cultural conservatism. They described these people as “young, imposingly well connected, urban and very online.”
“Some are the black sheep at their own family Thanksgivings, yet they project confidence that they’re the relevant ones now. Many are hot enough to be extras in the upcoming ‘American Psycho’ remake,” Colyar wrote.
Colyar’s reference to the classic 2000 Yuppie satire horror film is no accident, especially considering the movie now feels intertwined with the same manosphere that aided Trump’s return to the White House. The film, starring Christian Bale as Wall Street investment banker/serial killer Patrick Bateman, is still worth interpreting even 25 years after its release.
Its critiques on American culture are still relevant. There have been plenty of essays and articles over the years about what it means for America and masculinity.
However, Bateman has now been misinterpreted as a “sigma male,” a symbol of hustle culture in a toxic TikTok trend, as GQ’s Ruchira Sharma identified. The irony of calling Bateman a “sigma male” is that the film delves into Bateman’s hollow life despite his sadistic crimes against those around him. The movie that gets praised by manosphere influencers — full of “brocasters” like Joe Rogan — now feels more relevant than ever in satirizing consumerism and a hyper-competitive form of masculinity.
In the article, GQ even identifies a TikTok, by a user with millions of followers and likes, that defines what a sigma male is: a man who has to be standoffish and internalize thoughts while maintaining a steely look. Bateman is the most frequent pop culture icon used in these videos, according to Sharma.
Cole Ross | Digital Design Director
But analyzing the film and understanding its intention flies in the face of those who tout Bateman as some form of a “sigma male.” There’s an even simpler irony in “American Psycho” being a hallmark of the “sigma male grindset.” Despite the original source material coming from Bret Easton Ellis’ novel of the same name, the film adaptation is by two women: director and writer Mary Harron and co-writer Guinevere Turner.
Indeed, Harron told The New York Times a year before the film’s release the book was critical of macho male behavior at the time, relating it to her experiences with men at Oxford University.
“I recognized these wealthy, privileged, handsome young men, who travel in gangs, who have such a sense of entitlement and who are so obsessed with each other and competitive with each other that they’re only interested in sleeping with a woman if one of the other guys wants her,” Harron told The NYT.
From the jump, Harron and Turner’s interests are readily apparent. Bateman, accompanied by fellow investment bankers (Justin Theroux, Bill Sage, Josh Lucas), sits in a popular restaurant that serves fancy-sounding food like swordfish meatloaf with onion marmalade. The men complain about not getting into nicer restaurants and how co-workers like Paul Allen (Jared Leto) have better accounts to handle at the firm. They all have silver American Express cards and one colleague makes antisemitic remarks before being lightly scolded by Bateman.
Even before the movie’s gruesome deaths, these Wall Street investment bankers are hyper-competitive serial killers in their own way. There’s a cut-throat nature to their “friendly” conversations, always trying to figure out who has the better accounts or who is in the better restaurant.
Each of the terrifying murders involves some form of competitiveness or materialism. Whether it’s denigrating and killing a homeless man or slaughtering Allen while dissecting Huey Lewis and the News’ “Hip to be Square,” Bateman obsesses over money and consumerism. Additionally, he identifies the conformist nature in “Hip to be Square,” pointing to some sense of self-awareness.
Bateman narrates his morning routine in one of the more memorable scenes in the movie, further emphasizing his obsessions with materialism. But the end of the narration points to Bateman’s further self-awareness that there is an emptiness in his life.
As Bateman says, “I’m simply not there,” at the end of the narration, implying a general check-out from this overwhelmingly hollow world, he takes off his facial mask. Thus, we see the various faces and identities of Bateman, a serial killer and an investment banker. But the line hints toward these professions having no difference, as there is no actual human underneath this cold facade.
Bateman, similar to Allen, gets his name mixed up with his co-workers, so he hears how some of his colleagues really feel about him. Furthermore, the mistaken identities show the uniformity in all of these men’s lives. Like Bateman, everyone around him, including his materialistic fiancée (Reese Witherspoon), has an emptiness to it.
The ending of the film points to this conclusion as well, where Bateman cannot parse out whether his murders actually happened before narrating how he can never escape this life.
Bateman may have these traits of a “sigma male”— he narrates to himself, and he seemingly has a standoffish nature with his choice in music. And yet, all of these choices from the filmmakers, choices these social media figures eat up, were made consciously to show how this lifestyle and this brand of masculinity is toxic. Furthermore, it shows the hollowness of the Reagan-era 80s and the Yuppie lifestyle.
With a manosphere building upon and intersecting various aspects of “sigma males,” the film needs to be saved from this misinterpretation.
It was supposed to be a satire. Now, it’s a rallying cry.
