‘The Shards’ review: ‘American Psycho’ author’s stabby meta-memoir is an LA horror story

“K ids today have it fuckin’ easy,” says Bret AKA Bret Easton Ellis, the controversial author of American Psycho and The Rules Of Attraction. Published in 2023, The Shards is his meta-memoir, now metamorphosed into a deliciously lurid new show – a highly fictionalised look at his senior high school year. Sure, Gen Alpha have to reckon with Trump, climate change and unemployment but 1981 Los Angeles was the era of the serial killer. READ MORE: The best films of 2026… so far! With Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez and John Wayne Gacy all stalking the land, the innocence of the American childhood has ebbed away with every new bodybag. Here, set to tunes such as The Stranglers’ ‘Golden Brown’, Duran Duran’s ‘Planet Earth’ and ‘Vienna’ by Ultravox, The City Of Angels’ sunny climes can’t mask the fact that darkness and death lurk in parking lots and alleyways. Or in one case, a tennis court, as a luckless female victim finds out when she is strung up against the net. Stylish, sexy and sick – exactly as Easton Ellis would like it – The Shards is created by one-man TV machine Ryan Murphy (Glee, American Horror Story), who directs the opening episode and sets the tone for what’s to come. Murphy is...