bleak paranoid thriller and horrific weight loss

Rating: 6/10 (15 April 2015)

Machinist Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) hasn't slept for a year. His body is wasting away. Prostitute Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is the person closest to him. He has no friends. He puts up post-it notes as reminders. He spends time at an airport diner where single mom waitress Maria works the graveyard shift. He is haunted by menacing new worker Ivan or maybe he's not even real. His carelessness cause Miller (Michael Ironside) to lose an arm at work. Then a game of hangman appear on post-its on his fridge.
Two things stand out in this movie. The bleak neverworld existence and Christian Bale's emaciated body are both shocking. The dark moody feel exists even in the bright daylight. The colors are washed out and there is a grinding darkness about the movie. Director Brad Anderson is unrelenting although I don't think the reveal is perfect. The paranoia is so disjointed that a lot of it feels random. The reveal would work much better if the movie is sets up with more logic and orderly storytelling. The best twist endings are ones that everybody thinks they could guess at but nobody actually does. There are simply no clues to the final reveal. Christian Bale's body is horrific and shocking. I'm not going to reward this obsessive weight loss but it is insane.