Prepare to be psyched

Rating: 8/10 (27 February 2010)

I caught up with this movie last night, and I am still thinking about Christian Bale's performance continually. It will be difficult for me to think of him now, without thinking about Trevor Reznik, the character he played in this movie - such was his devotion. A full 10 stars to him for his acting and those long agonizing days he must have gone on without food to skin himself off, literally.
Lighting and camera work is brilliant. Nothing wrong there. Entire movie has a greenish gray color to it that helps building up the confusion in the environment for the story to traverse. All actors have done well too. Jennifer Jason Leigh looks sexy as ever. Nothing really to complain about on technical grounds.
However, following areas could have been worked upon slightly more. I just got a feeling the director ignored them for some reasons, perhaps out of indecisiveness about how much to scare the audience.
1. There was way too much background music in the movie. The story really should have forced the audience to focus on each and every sound, such as footsteps, running water, blowing breeze, opening of door locks etc., and thus, let their wild imaginations run amok. Instead, I found the score somewhat distracting in some scenes. Psycho thrillers should let people build up the fear in their hearts themselves? There really are not required any external stimuli to produce the scare. I believe the human brain will do it itself if left alone in silence.
2. The final revelation about the reality of Trevor Reznik was not as impressive as the build up to it was. Yeah, I let out a loud "Ahhh... now I get it", but really, it was only a sigh of relief after having landed upon the solution to a mystery that I had been struggling to solve for the previous 97 minutes. In other direct words, the truth wasn't really as impressive as the journey to it was.
Other than these two areas, everything was just great. I just cannot stop praising Bale for this efforts in this movie, and probably never will.
I take two stars off for the above two points, and assign this movie eight stars.