Released in 2000, American Psycho functions as sharp satire, but it has also endured as a cult film within queer culture. Patrick Bateman’s hyper-controlled masculinity—obsessed with bodies, surfaces, hierarchy, and approval—reads as a performance so rigid it collapses in on itself. The film’s fixation on grooming, comparison, and coded status mirrors systems familiar to anyone who has navigated masculinity as something learned, enforced, and constantly evaluated.
Director Mary Harron’s approach emphasized artifice over realism, pushing Bateman toward camp and exposing the emptiness beneath his power. His longing for recognition, his fear of exposure, and his constant self-monitoring resonate strongly with queer readings of identity as performance—where the mask is flawless, and the self underneath is increasingly unstable.
