The Machinist
Like a stalker on the corner of a dark street at midnight, this film creeps through its duration at an unsettling pace and with a frightening agenda. It peers through the blinds letting shifts of daylight into its twisted setting and conjures a wild looming that is rarely seen outside of David Lynch’s back catalogue. The result is chilling and it harbours a plot so fantastic that even Christian Bale has trouble unmasking the flaccid conclusion to this otherwise ballsy picture.
I wanted this to be great. I wanted this to be something really special. The spooky ambience and forgotten hype that this film caused when it was released in 2004 almost guaranteed its inability to live up to my drastic expectations. I recently saw the film for the first time and it was not hard to see why. The film sweeps along at a gentle pace, allowing for its baleful darkness to seep in. Sinister characters rustle about spacious boundaries but are left to fester as opposed to being back handed across the films disappointingly sloppy ending. It is too bad they had no say in the matter, for the typical showdown almost blows this fragile horror out of the grim crimson pool it built its hype around. I plan to keep my eye out for writer Scott Kosar (kicking aside his horror remake plans) with hope that he will adjust his koniec ideas in projects still to come. His wonderful ability to weave relationships with the unknown is a gift, it’s just a pity that director Brad Anderson couldn’t help steer the project in a different direction
Copyright Daniel Emmerson 2008 all rights reserved
