Slasher · Film

Patrick Bateman

Satire so precise that half the internet mistook it for aspiration

Threat index 72 American Psycho 2000

Attribute scores

Power48

Intellect74

Menace70

Fear factor76

Cultural impact84

Charisma78

Editorial estimates on a 0–100 scale, calibrated against every other character in the index. Not official canon.

Who they are

Bateman is an investment banker whose personality is entirely assembled from products, business cards and other people's opinions. The film treats his murders and his skincare routine with identical seriousness, and the joke is that nobody around him can tell him apart from his colleagues even when he confesses. He is a villain who is genuinely funny and genuinely empty.

Defining traits

Compulsive status anxietyInterchangeable identityPerformative expertiseDissociation from his own actsImmaculate self-presentation

What makes them dangerous

He is invisible inside a system that rewards exactly the traits that make him dangerous.

And what undoes them

He is desperate to be recognized, and even his confession fails to register with anyone.

Things you might not know

Bale built the performance partly on the unnervingly bright delivery of 1980s talk-show hosts.
The director and screenwriter were both women, and the adaptation sharpened the novel into comedy.
The film leaves it genuinely open whether any of the killings happened outside his head.