Benjamin Walker stars as Patrick Bateman, who has to return some videotapes and sing about it in this electro-pop musical

Tired of all those idiotic millennials with their sappy nostalgia, trying to pass off the 1980s as something more than a spasm of shame and revulsion? Then American Psycho is the show for you, bringing the ruthlessness of a serial killer in an orgiastic bloodbath to its depiction of the decade that annihilated taste, restraint and feeling. Director Rupert Goold, composer Duncan Sheik and book writer Roberta Aguirre-Sacasa crank up the satirical volume on Bret Easton Ellis’ cult novel in a musical with design to die for and a cool, period-appropriate electro-pop score. And as Patrick Bateman, the chiseled Benjamin Walker takes us on a riveting journey of existential ennui that bleeds into violence before bottoming out in anguish. Is it a first-rate musical? Not quite. The songs of narcissism, label-whoring, contemptuous greed and status-seeking one-upmanship are just as often lists as mini-narratives, even if they’re fun and catchy. (Who could resist a number that rhymes “charred mahi-mahi” with “Isaac Mizrahi?”) And the more reflective turn in the second act doesn’t have quite the same seductive stiletto-blade wit as the first, which bookends its celebration of unapologetic shallowness with gory splatter kills. But the show is a very sharp, distinctly theatrical treatment of its source material, in many ways improving on Mary Harron’s movie version from 2000.