The first time I watched this film, I was in my second year of middle school. I had come across it in a book called The Cult of LEGO (God, I can't believe I still remember the name ten years later), listed alongside The Silence of the Lambs and a few other classic horror films. I was probably just curious; it never occurred to me to think about age ratings. I watched all of them in a single day.

What stayed with me most that first time were some of the murders: Bateman (the protagonist, played by Christian Bale) keeping the head of a woman he had killed in his refrigerator; and Christie, one of his victims, discovering the truth and running down the hallway screaming for help, only to be killed by the chainsaw Bateman drops on her from above. And, of course, the famous business card scene.

At that age, I probably saw it as nothing more than a horror film, or a thriller. Later in middle school, and even in high school, when I was hurt or miserable, I would sometimes put it on to make myself feel better.

Perhaps I was still too far from the stage of life those business cards stood for. I could not understand why these Wall Street elites would obsess over comparing cards that looked almost exactly alike, spending themselves on something so empty and meaningless. It made them seem unbelievably shallow, and stupid.

It was only after several years of applying for jobs in the UK that I felt, for the first time, how strongly it spoke to me. I began to understand how this so-called "business card comparison" can grind down your mind.

I don't know how I became the kind of person I once thought was wasting himself on shallow, empty things. It feels as if your outer shell and your actual self have come apart. I wouldn't even call it "wearing a mask". It is more like a split running through one and the same personality.

The feeling of applying slowly shifts: from presenting yourself, to pleasing people, to pleasing them desperately, to practically 'sucking' them off, then going numb, until in the end you can no longer feel anything at all. Yet there is still one very clear red line. Once it is crossed, the machine either starts running again, or breaks down completely.

And you know how hard you have worked for it. You know you have given everything you have, maybe even 200%, and you know how much the result matters to your life. It is no longer like the earlier years, when the consequences were small and you could simply tell yourself not to care.

Then someone chooses another business card.

And your red line is crossed.

The director keeps Bateman at a slight distance, which makes him all the more ridiculous, all the more satirical. But compared with the Bateman of more than twenty years ago, this sickness has long since spread beyond Wall Street and into every level of society. Everyone is sick now, to the point that Bateman is no longer some distant character. He could be someone around you, or he could be you. And because of that, you might find yourself feeling far more sympathy, and far more recognition, than you expected.

But if I could step outside the rules of this "business card" game, and no longer be bound by them, I would still see how ridiculous, and how regressive, the whole thing is.