Editorials
Horror’s Hallowed Grounds: ‘American Psycho’!
This weekend we posted the brand new edition of Sean Clark’s Horror’s Hallowed Grounds, where Sean heads to check out the filming locations of Mary Harron’s classic American Psycho! If you click here you can check out pictures from the infamous 2000 film, alongside the locations as they stand now in New York! You’ll find links to all of Clark’s previously articles by clicking here. Read on for American Psycho!
American Psycho
DiCaprio passed after pressure about possibly ruining his teen star status after the mega hit Titanic. Re-enter Mary Harron and her choice for the part of Patrick Bateman, Christian Bale.
The film was shot in 1999 for a budget of 7 million dollars. The film is supposed to take place in New York City in 1987 but was for the most part filming in downtown Toronto Canada.
Our first location is Patrick Bateman’s apartment located on the 11th floor of the fictitious American Gardens Building on West 81st Street in Manhattan.
The immaculate cold white apartment with the stainless steal kitchen was a set built in Toronto Canada. The same goes for Paul Allen’s apartment.
The locations in this film are mostly bars and restaurants, so lets start there.
When Patrick fails to score a reservation at the legendary Dorsia, (the fictitious location we actually never see in the film) he takes his doped-up date to Barcadia instead.
Barcadia is actually the Pacific Rim restaurant Monsoon located at 100 Simcoe Street in downtown Toronto. Sadly the day I visited this location there was a notice of eviction posted on the door stating it had closed down just two days before.
Later, Bateman picks up a model at a hip dance club which is actually the Phoenix Concert Theatre located at 410 Sherbourne Street in Toronto. Upstairs at the Phoenix is the balcony lounge where Bateman and friends talk to the models.
Texarkana the Mexican style restaurant where Bateman meets Paul Allen for diner is actually Montana located at 145 John Street in downtown Toronto.
The restaurant in which Patrick dumps his fiancée, played by Reese Witherspoon at the time of filming was called Shark City until it closed down in 2004. Shark City was located at 117 Eglinton Avenue East in Toronto.
Later, Mr. Bateman takes a not-quite-casual lunch with detective Donald Kimball played by Willem Dafoe. Kimball has some further questions about Bateman’s whereabouts on the night of Paul Allen’s disappearance. They dine at the French restaurant the Savoy located at 253 Victoria Street in downtown Toronto. When I visited this location it was closed for remodeling.
Bateman and the boys lounge around drinking expensive cognac having a good ol’ time until Luis Carruthers played by Matt Ross breaks up the fun by presenting them with his brand new near perfect business card. This was filmed at Le Méridien King Edward Hotel’s Consort Bar located at 37 King Street West in downtown Toronto.
There are a few scenes shot in New York besides some of the basic stock coverage you see in the film from time to time. The corner where Bateman picks up the prostitute he calls Christy was shot in New York’s Meat Packing District.
Another important iconic New York shot is one of Bateman crossing the street in front of the Twin Towers in Manhattan.
After Bateman shoots the woman for disagreeing with his trying to feed the ATM machine a kitten he is first running through the streets on New York City near the Rector Street Station located at the corner of Rector Street and Trinity Place in lower Manhattan.
He then runs around the corner and is in downtown Toronto. This is where the police shoot out took place on Pearl Street between Simcoe and Duncan just around the corner from the previously mentioned Monsoon.
Next Batman heads into to what he thinks is his office building. Once he enters he realizes that he has run into an almost identical building next door to his. This upsets him so he shoots the front desk security guard.
The buildings in reality are the Toronto-Dominion Centre located in the heart of the Central Business District of Toronto, at the southwest corner of King and Bay Streets. The area occupies an entire city block, from King to Bay to Wellington to York Streets, as well as a section to the south of King Street between Wellington and Piper Streets (between Bay and York Streets). Another unique thing about this location is that its architect Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe also built the nearly-identical Seagram Building in Manhattan which makes this Toronto location the perfect stand-in for New York City.
These two buildings are by far my favorite locations from the film because they rare exactly as they appear in the film both physically and geographically. Once he shoots the janitor he exits the first building and runs across the courtyard into the correct building.
Bateman heads up the elevator and to his office that we see several times in the film. The office was a set built in a studio in Toronto.
Lastly we end where the film ends, Harry’s Bar. This is where Patrick confesses to his lawyer. In reality this upper crust bar is called Biff’s located at 4 Front Street East in downtown Toronto. Sadly it was closed when I got there but as you can see from the pictures below the front door is right behind Bateman with it’s very recognizable window above it.
Well I hope you enjoyed this look inside the decadent world of Patrick Bateman. I’m off to return some videotapes. – Sean Clark
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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