American Psycho Explained: Breaking Down the Ending

There are few films out there with an ending as arresting and strange as American Psycho. Don’t get us wrong, the entire movie is a trip, but the way the film devolves into madness before snapping back into focus for a powerful and confusing monologue in the final moments is just next-level. Whether you’re here to figure out what the heck you just watched or you’ve been digging into some theories about the ending online and want to see what the consensus is, we’ve got you covered. We’ll break down everything there is to know about the ending of the film (and novel) American Psycho. Don’t worry—you can return those video tapes later.

American Psycho's Ending: What Really Happened?

The ending of American Psycho is open to interpretation and purposefully ambiguous, but there are theories. One is that everything occurred in Bateman’s head because he faced zero consequences. Another theory is that Bateman was lying about everything. It's also possible that it all happened exactly as described.

Section 1 of 12:

The End of the Film: Quick Summary

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The events at the end are essential to understanding the film. After killing his coworker Paul Allen, he begins using his apartment as a kind of home base for his other murders and sexcapades. Bateman sets up an alibi about Allen being in London on his voice message and he slowly begins to lose control over his murderous impulses. ^{[1]
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- Bateman breaks up with his fiancée, Evelyn. He tries telling her he’s a murderous psychopath, but she seems to ignore the comments.
- He goes to an ATM that demands he feed it a stray cat. Bateman lifts the cat up and tries to put it into the ATM.
- An old lady sees him with the cat, asks him to stop, and he kills her. Cops witness the shooting and chase Bateman.
- Bateman shoots at the cop cars chasing him, which causes them to explode.
- He goes to his office, kills a security guard who calls him “Mr. Smith,” and calls his lawyer. He confesses his crimes in a voicemail.
- After going home to shower, he goes back to Paul Allen’s apartment only to find it empty and clean. The dead bodies he left there are gone. A real estate agent in the unit explains the condo is for sale and implies that she knows who Bateman is (and what he did) but she doesn’t seem interested in pursuing it further.
- Bateman leaves, visits his co-workers, and sees his lawyer. The lawyer thinks his voicemail was a joke, and he explains that he had dinner with Paul Allen a few days ago.
- Bateman gives a speech about being unable to pay for his sins and the film ends.

Section 2 of 12:

Ending Theory #1: It’s all in his head.

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This interpretation holds that nothing Bateman did actually happened. There are a few solid pieces of evidence that suggest Bateman probably never killed anybody and that this entire film is about his breaking from reality. If this is the case, American Psycho is kind of a film about how people never receive the mental health treatment they need, which is an interesting way of thinking about it! ^{[2]
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Research source} Anyway, here’s the evidence none of this happened:
- Every time Bateman admits to killing people, he is either ignored or it is laughed off as a joke. Even the cop tracking down Paul Allen doesn’t seem capable of arresting Bateman, as if he can’t actually be arrested for anything in the first place.
- A lot of fantastical things in the film’s final third would never happen in reality. An ATM would never ask you to feed it a cat and firing a handgun twice wouldn’t cause three cop cars to explode.
- Paul Allen is found! He’s not dead! Bateman’s lawyer had dinner with him after Bateman supposedly killed him, Detective Kimball confirms he’s alive, and there are no bodies in Allen’s apartment where Bateman was supposedly stashing his victims.

Section 3 of 12:

Ending Theory #2: Bateman is lying about everything.

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This reading relies on Bateman being an unreliable narrator. It’s a bit more noticeable in the book since Bateman directly narrates the whole thing (except the ending—more on that later), but Bateman is 100% in charge of the story. He regularly speaks directly to the viewer in his monologues and comes close to breaking the 4th wall at several points. Basically, this interpretation states that Bateman is an unreliable narrator and he’s lying about his behavior. Some of the crimes may have happened, but not the way he said they did. Here’s the key evidence:
- The names of characters seem to change pretty easily. Characters refer to one another with the wrong names, and even Bateman is mistaken for multiple other characters over the course of the film. It’s almost like Bateman himself loses track of who did what.
- The ridiculous elements of the ending (the ATM cat, the cop cars exploding, the shooting spree) are completely out of place compared to the other events of the film, which are largely realistic.
- Everyone ignores Bateman when he confesses—almost as if he never actually confesses in real life.

Section 4 of 12:

Ending Theory #3: Bateman is mistaken about Paul Allen.

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This theory suggests Bateman just misunderstood who he killed. The whole downfall in the third half of the film sort of hinges on Bateman’s murder of Paul Allen. There actually isn’t a lot of good evidence he killed Allen, though—at least not beyond the scene where he supposedly committed the act. This theory reads the film as a kind of dark physical comedy where a psycho creates tons of problems for themselves over a single basic mistake. It also becomes a poignant film about how the only people who actually get hurt are the weak ones, since Bateman’s only victims in this reading are homeless people, blue-collar workers, and prostitutes. ^{[3]
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Research source} Here’s the evidence:
- Paul Allen’s name in the book is Paul Owen. This seems like a minor change, but it’s kind of a subtle nod that Bateman may not have the right guy in the film. ^{[4]
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- Bateman is constantly mistaken for other people. A security guard calls him “Mr. Smith,” and several of his coworkers actually call him “Paul Allen.” One coworker even talks trash about Bateman to Bateman, thinking he’s Allen. This kind of suggests that either Bateman is Allen and the murder is symbolic, or that these fancy investment banker guys are so interchangeable that even they forget who is who.
- Paul Allen is confirmed to be alive by others, so either those people are wrong and they mistook someone else for Allen, or Bateman didn’t kill Paul Allen. This theory holds that the second one is true.

Section 5 of 12:

Ending Theory #4: Everything happened as presented.

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This is likely the most popular reading by people who have studied the text. Imagine everything in the film happened as depicted. How do you account for the fact that cop cars seem to explode when Bateman fires a handgun at them, nobody believes Bateman’s confessions, and people frequently confuse Allen and Bateman for other people? Well…what if white privilege and tremendous wealth explained it? Don’t wealthy elites get away with things all the time? ^{[5]
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Research source} The evidence:
- The physical evidence of Bateman’s crimes seems legit. Bateman notices blood on his clothing and in Allen’s home well after the crimes have been committed.
- The real estate agent Bateman runs into at Allen’s apartment has him clocked. The place is full of candles and repainted because there were dead bodies there—the agent just didn’t want to give up the commission from the sale, so she disposed of the bodies herself.
- Bateman’s journal is real. It seems like people ignore his drawings and writings all film, but his secretary opens the journal and confirms its contents are real.

Section 6 of 12:

Which theory makes the most sense?

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The film intentionally keeps the ending vague, so it’s debatable. Theory #4 (it’s all real) is mostly considered to be the most authoritative among scholars and critics who have studied the text, but that doesn’t automatically make it the “correct” reading. The film (and book) intentionally keeps the ending vague, so the author and director clearly want to leave everything up to interpretation. ^{[6]
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- Every potential theory has a strong counterpoint. You might summarize the issues with each theory as follows:
  - Theory #1 (it’s all fake): Allen is never seen again and the physical evidence is depicted as 100% real.
  - Theory #2 (Bateman is a liar): The ATM cat fiasco and the exploding cop cars seem uncharacteristically fake, but everything else seems real.
  - Theory #3 (he’s wrong about Allen): Allen is never seen again, so it’s possible he actually is dead.
  - Theory #4 (it’s all real) : It seems practically unlikely a person could do everything in the film and never get in trouble.

Section 7 of 12:

What’s the point of the ending?

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The point is that Bateman gets away with everything. Regardless of whether the events depicted in the film are real or not, you can’t dispute that Bateman sees zero consequences. He isn’t arrested, he isn’t ostracized, he isn’t reprimanded. As Bateman says in the final monologue, “My punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself…this confession has meant nothing.” ^{[7]
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- There is no rest for the wicked. Regardless of what he actually did, Bateman views himself as a bad guy. However, he’s emotionally destroyed by the end of the film. There is no reward for anything he did.
- Powerful people get away with stuff. Bateman is a big hoity-toity investment banker with basically infinite money. As a result, nothing bad seems to happen to him. In this way, the film is an indictment against the inequality in the world and how that inequality gives wealthy, powerful men a playground to do anything they want with impunity.

Section 8 of 12:

How the Endings Inform the Film's Themes

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Ending theory #1’s theme: consumer culture is bad for us and mental health is important. If everything happens in Batemen’s head, the film’s core theme seems to basically boil down to the point that consumer culture is destroying us mentally. Bateman’s obsessions with business cards, cars, status, trophy wives, vinyl records, and money does nothing for him—he’s still a miserable psychopath who can’t get the mental help he needs to self-actualize. ^{[8]
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Ending theory #2’s theme: wealthy men feel lost and empty even if they have everything. If Bateman is just lying about everything, the film is ultimately a dark comedy about how empty the people at the top of the food chain feel. Bateman literally ends the film by saying that nothing we’ve witnessed has helped him “gain [a] deeper knowledge” of himself. Even when he tries to confess, the world refuses to hold him accountable and that’s ultimately a bad thing for him.
3

Ending theory #3’s theme: mental health episodes can unravel quickly. This reading of the film (everything happened, but Bateman didn’t kill Paul Allen—he killed someone else) is probably more playful than the other options. It sort of treats the film as a big comedy where a single act of psychopathic confusion results in a rapid downfall where things get out of hand very fast. ^{[9]
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Ending theory #4’s theme: capitalism is a nightmare and wealthy people don’t have consequences. All of it is real, Bateman is a serial killer, cop cars explode in his presence, and there is no penalty for his crimes. All of the wealth he has amassed has created a situation where it’s impossible for him to be held accountable. There is simply no way for Bateman to be punished—not legally, not spiritually, not financially, nothing. Rich white dudes get away with things. That’s our world.
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All of these themes sort of work together! This is part of why American Psycho is revered as such a dynamic, interesting, and powerful text. None of the interpretations of the film’s ending are mutually exclusive. All of American Psycho’ s endings can be valid and the themes sort of intertwine with one another. ^{[10]
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Section 9 of 12:

What does the director of the film say?

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Mary Harron refuses to say which ending theory is valid. In an interview from 2023, American Psycho director Mary Harron was asked, “Did Bateman (Christian Bale) really kill all those people?” She replied, “I would never answer that. As Quentin Tarantino says, ‘If I tell you that, I take this movie away from you.” ^{[11]
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- Harron’s co-writer, Guinevere Turner, also echoed this sentiment. However, Turner hinted that she especially dislikes the “it was all fake” reading. She said, “I will say there’s a moment where it becomes less realistic, and that’s the moment when the ATM says Feed Me a Stray Cat…To me and Mary, the book left it up in the air, too, what was real and what was not real. We didn’t think that everything was real because some of it is literally surreal. But we just decided, together, that we both really disliked movies where the big reveal is that it was all in someone’s head or it was all a dream. ^{[12]
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Section 10 of 12:

What does the author of the book say?

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Bret Easton Ellis says he dislikes the dream theory, but that it’s open. In 2015, Ellis shared his thoughts on the ending: "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.” ^{[13]
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- Keep in mind that an author saying a certain reading isn’t true does not mean that reading isn’t valid. For example, Fahrenheit 451 is universally seen as text about the dangers of censorship and big government. Bradbury, the author, claimed he wanted to write about how TV is bad for you. Any serious reading of the book comes to the censorship reading, though! ^{[14]
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  Research source} In other words, what an author says about their work does not negate other interpretations.

Section 11 of 12:

How is the ending of the book different?

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The book ends with a sign on a door and a speech about economics. The end of the book is fascinatingly different from the film. The book ends with Bateman going to a bar with his coworkers. A rerun of George H.W. Bush’s inauguration and a speech by Ronald Reagan play on the TV and all the coworkers discuss money. They all agree that money doesn’t make you happy and Bateman stares at a door. The sign on the door reads, “THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.” Then, the book ends. ^{[15]
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- The “THIS IS NOT AN EXIT” text is in a different font from the entire rest of the book, which is super interesting. It’s almost as if the door is saying the ending of the book isn’t an exit to the story!
- The conversation among the coworkers at the end is different in the movie, too. The coworkers talk about how hypocritical Ronald Reagan is, not about money being unable to buy you happiness.

Section 12 of 12:

Movies like American Psycho

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If you’re a fan of American Psycho’ s weird ending, this is mandatory viewing. There are some really interesting parallels here. On top of that, DiCaprio gives the performance of a lifetime, and you get to see Robert De Niro play a nightmare! ^{[16]
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American Beauty American Beauty came out one year before American Psycho, and the two films have a lot in common. Aside from the word “America” in their titles, both movies investigate the interior lives of disturbed people. They’re also a fascinating pairing because they seem to indict American consumerism on two different levels: American Psycho is critical of excess consumerism but leaves some room for “healthy” consumption (consider how enriching Bateman’s experience of music is), while American Beauty seems to suggest the entire system is bunk and there’s no point in even trying to engage in capitalism.
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Fight Club American Psycho and Fight Club are both about disturbed individuals who may or may not be doing some very dark things. They’re relatively comparable films stylistically, too.
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Donnie Darko Darko is about another psychopath, except this psycho (played by a young Jake Gyllenhal)somehow redeems themselves this time. It’s not a fun movie, but it certainly has a sweeter thematic conclusion than American Psycho if you’re looking for something equally deep but less pessimistic. ^{[17]
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Nightcrawler Speaking of Jake Gyllenhal, he plays another psychopath in Nightcrawler. The performances here are incredible and like American Psycho, this is another tale concerned with the dangers of capitalist ambition.
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Se7en Fincher’s Se7en doesn’t have any thematic parallels to American Psycho and the ending isn’t ambiguous at all (although it is incredibly powerful and shocking). Se7en makes the cut for being so emotionally and stylistically connected to American Psycho, though. If you liked the texture, tone, and feel of American Psycho, you’ll enjoy Se7en.
- The film’s official title is Se7en, but if you see anyone referring to a film called “Seven” they’re probably referring to the same movie.
It’s possible that American Psycho doesn’t exist—either as a novel or film—without Taxi Driver. Scorsese’s 1976 masterpiece follows a deranged and isolated loner who takes a job driving taxis at night because he can’t sleep. If you’ve never seen it, just watch it. The entire film will rock your world and you’ll see why the film is likely one of the core inspirations behind American Psycho. ^{[18]
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No Country for Old Men If you’re really looking for films that depict psychopaths, No Country for Old Men is probably the best option. Psychiatrists have sort of universally agreed on Javier Bardem’s performance as the single most accurate depiction of an actual psychopath ever put on film. ^{[19]
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American Psycho Explained: Breaking Down the Ending

American Psycho's Ending: What Really Happened?

Steps

The End of the Film: Quick Summary

Ending Theory #1: It’s all in his head.

Ending Theory #2: Bateman is lying about everything.

Ending Theory #3: Bateman is mistaken about Paul Allen.

Ending Theory #4: Everything happened as presented.

Which theory makes the most sense?

What’s the point of the ending?

How the Endings Inform the Film's Themes

What does the director of the film say?

What does the author of the book say?

How is the ending of the book different?

Movies like American Psycho

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