Party Monster

200 votes and 13 Reviews

Rotten Tomatoes® Score
29% 75%

Release Date: October 24, 2003

On DVD/VOD: February 10, 2004

1h 38m | Documentary, Drama, Thriller

Michael Alig (Culkin) and James St. James (Green), two kids from the mid-west, come to New York where they re-invent themselves as fabulous people.

Shy outsiders as kids, they both learn to hide their feelings behind witty facades, and their bickering and barbed exchanges reveal a profound bond and budding a co-dependency. Although James initiates Michael into New York nightlife, it is Michael who quickly rises to the top. Everyone seems unable to resist him.

Peter Gatien, the powerful club owner, indulges Michael as though he were his own son. At the other extreme Angel Melendez looks up to Michael as though he were a god.

The naturally shy and retiring Michael puts up an exuberant and outgoing front, and finds that in order to retain his attention-getting persona, he has to outdo himself with increasingly outrageous pranks.

But when he takes it a step too far and murders Angel, James realizes that there was more to it than self-defence, and the murder starts to eat away at him. He realizes that no excuse could justify such a brutal thing. Even the surreal anarchic alternative universe they created has to conform.