American Psycho 2: F

What a mess. Kunis has the dignity to be openly ashamed of this movie, so I will give her that.

The connection between this straight-to-DVD mistake and the first (and only) American Psycho is virtually non-existent. I’m fairly certain they had a script for a shitty thriller and they just spent a little extra money to mention Patrick Bateman in the film so they could put “AMERICAN PSYCHO” on the cover above Mila Kunis’s emotionless face and next to what looks like a photoshopped meat hook. This is a business plan that horror fans know well; if you like this genre, you have seen the memory of some of your favorite movies defiled through cheap sequels and reboots.

The studio was hoping you said one of these things to yourself when you saw this movie on the shelf:

1. “Oh boy! American Psycho 2! I loved the first one! Better check this out!”

2. “Oh boy! Mila Kunis as a serial killer! She’s a babe! Better check this out!”

3. “Oh boy! Shatner is in this? I hate my life so I better check this out!”

I’m sad to say that I fell for it, mostly because of #3. Now I hate my life even more.

The movie is about Mila Kunis killing her classmates so she can be Shatner’s teaching assistant. Or at least that’s what I got out of it while I was jamming pencils into my ears and eyes.

The movie was shot in 20 days total and oh boy, is it obvious. AP2 has none of the cleverness, gore, meaning, or downright evil of American Psycho. There is no social commentary and the acting is a centrifuge of suck. It’s like Shatner and Kunis are having a competition to see who could make their lines sound more forced. There are gratuitous voice-overs used to remind us that Kunis’s character is a psychopath.

The soundtrack has goofy whimsical music you would expect to hear in a kids’ movie like Air Bud or Problem Child. I don’t know what they were going for there. It plays over and over whenever Kunis’s therapist shows up. They probably bought it for cheap.

There are about a half dozen off-screen kills that cardboard teenage victims walk into like dummies. Most of Kunis’s time on screen is spent staring off into nothingness while one of her terrible voice-overs plays. She is pondering what it means to be a killer but it is so contrived, I barfed. And she looks/behaves like a dead-eyed vegetable, which I do not mean as an insult; I actually respect her for phoning in every syllable.

I gave it an F instead of a UV because maybe you’ll like it if you have a Kunis fixation. Check it out of you want to see her and Shatner shout their lines as quick as possible before grabbing paychecks.