In American Psycho, however, women’s bodies have been transformed into landscape-like obstacles blocking Christie’s escape. Elizabeth becomes a landscape painted in blood after Bateman begins devouring her flesh. When Christie runs from the room, slamming the mirrored door behind her, we see Elizabeth writhing in pain on the bed. Christie meets other human obstacles as she runs down a darkened hallway, frantically opening doors, looking for an escape from a chainsaw’s roar coming from the bedroom. She opens a closet where she finds two dead women hanging inside. In another dark room, she sees a head on the top of a television.
As she runs, Christie trips over Elizabeth's body, now halfway in the bathtub. Still screaming, Christie makes it out the front door and runs down the hall, banging on doors and pushing elevator buttons until she sees the stairwell and races for it. Bateman follows, revving the chainsaw. When he leans over the railing, aims the chainsaw at her and drops it, the stairwell looks like a canyon, and after the chainsaw stabs her, Christie’s sprawled body seems to melt into the floor.
Jean, on the other hand, survives despite the woman’s head visible in the freezer when Bateman offers her some sorbet. Although it is Evelyn’s phone call that disrupts Bateman’s attempt to shoot her with a nail gun, Jean’s desires for self-preservation saves her. When Bateman asks her if she wants to get hurt, Jean says no, “I don’t want to get bruised” and leaves, the only possible escape from gendered exploitation and a Yuppie Wendigo in American Psycho.
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