The whole time I was watching The Machinist, I kept expecting a Rod Serling voice-over to pop up and describe emaciated protagonist Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale). "Trevor Reznik. Machinist. Insomniac. A man wracked with guilt who can only find redemption ... in the Twilight Zone."
The Machinist is that kind of movie, an old-fashioned creeper that wears its influences on its grimy sleeve and is more concerned about freaking you out and screwing with your mind than making sure all the pieces of the plot fall into place. Director Brad Anderson is a master of atmosphere, having previously orchestrated maximum fright in 2001's haunted mental hospital movie, Session 9, and even created a surprising amount of suspense in his quirky 2000 sci-fi romance, Happy Accidents. Here, working for the first time from someone else's script, he takes a fairly pedestrian thriller with one neat twist and turns it into a moody rumination on guilt.
Writer Scott Kosar, who penned last year's mediocre Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, gives us Trevor, the machinist of the title, a troubled soul who claims not to have slept in a year and looks like he weighs less than Mary-Kate Olsen (Bale dropped an alarming 60 pounds for the role). Blamed for an accident that caused a co-worker to lose an arm, Trevor is haunted by a mysterious stranger named Ivan (John Sharian) and can only find solace in his interactions with Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), one of those hookers with a heart of gold, and Marie (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon), the waitress at the airport coffee shop where he goes to not eat.
Anderson adds all the rest, the elements that make The Machinist this year's Sixth Sense and not this year's Identity. Bale's weight loss nearly constitutes an entire performance in itself, but he uses the physical transformation to bring out Trevor's instability and helplessness. Cinematographer Xavi Gimenez shoots everything in washed-out grays and blues, which combine with the austere set design to give every scene, even one that takes place in an amusement park, a sense of dread and otherworldliness. Roque Banos's score most directly recalls The Twilight Zone, or one of those "scary music" CDs you buy around Halloween.
The final revelation leaves more than a few loose ends, but Anderson is able to sell it as insightful rather than cheap, and his film works as a deeply unsettling mood piece, even if it doesn't tie everything up neatly. Rod Serling would be proud.