An effective psychological thriller

Rating: 8/10 (21 November 2015)

The Machinist stars Christian Bale in one of the weirdest and creepiest movies I think I have ever seen. Cue the theremin. It makes Hitchcock's Psycho look tame by comparison. Bale plays Trevor Reznik, who works in a gloomy machine shop from hell, one that apparently never heard of OSHA. The whole thing is filmed in a kind of high contrast off color monochrome. His whole life seems to revolve around visiting his prostitute/girlfriend and the girl whom he has come to know serving him at the Airport coffee shop. The guy is haunted and paranoid. He keeps getting post it notes in the form of a game of hangman on his refrigerator which creep him out. He also pursues a strange bullet-headed fellow with some fingers missing, who drives a red convertible and seems always there with a cheerful demeanor whenever something horrible happens, such as when a machine malfunctions and his co-worker loses an arm. Only Trevor seems to see him and is clearly going from bad to worse. Trevor claims to not have been able to sleep in a year. His weight is plummeting and he looks like a concentration camp survivor. The mystery to be solved is why all this is happening.
All in all, I thought it was an effective psychological thriller in the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock at his creepiest.