The Machinist

Director: Brad Anderson

2004 / 101min / 35mm

Christian Bale plays emaciated insomniac Trevor Reznik, the apparition-like central character of Anderson’s gunmetal gray, insinuatingly unsettling Dostoevskian thriller. After a year without sleep, Underground Man Reznick is at fault in a gruesome accident at the machine factory where he’s employed, and thereafter finds himself visited by visions of a grim-visaged stranger dogging his steps and an increasingly oppressive feeling of being at the center of a vast conspiracy with uncertain but almost definitely unpleasant aims. “One of the few movies to scale the barrier between chilly fantasy and authentic cinematic nightmare.” —The New York Times