Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a drama,
thriller film from 2004, titled The Machinist. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
Trevor Reznik is a factory machinist that hasn't been able to sleep in a year,
causing his body to lose an unhealthy amount of weight. One evening,
he's in his apartment rolling up a carpet to hide a body inside it, which he then puts in his truck
and takes to the beach for disposal. When he dumps it on the ground and kicks it towards the water,
instead of all of it falling together, the carpet unrolls itself and reveals its contents
as a man with a yellow flashlight approaches Trevor from behind and asks him who he is,
a question that shakes him to his care. Moments later, he's back at his place,
washing his hands with bleach while the man's yellow flashlight rests on a table. As he looks at
himself in the mirror, he discovers a post-it note on the wall behind him asking him "who are you",
so Trevor starts thinking back on how it all started. He's spending the night with Stevie,
a callgirl he visits often. She notices the state of his body and says that if he were any thinner,
he wouldn't exist. She also offers to make breakfast for him, but he needs to get to work,
so he leaves after tipping her generously. At the factory, Trevor hears his supervisor Tucker scold
Miller for turning off a machine to clean since it loses time. Trevor decides to chime in and
point out this is done because of safety reasons established by legal regulations, so Tucker leaves
Miller alone, only to tell Trevor that he's made it to his turd-list. When the shift ends,
all the machinists make plans for poker night and invite Trevor, but he turns them down as usual.
He gets called a spoilsport for it, and his coworkers can't help wondering what happened to
him, because he didn't use to be this way. In the middle of the night, Trevor drives all the way to
the airport to have coffee at his favorite diner where he knows the lovely waitress, María, who
teases him with the exact same phrase Stevie used: if he were any thinner, he wouldn't exist. Trevor
ignores the sudden feeling of deja-vu that crawls through his mind and continues to chat with her,
even flirting a little too when she brings him some pie for him to eat and gain some weight.
María is sure she's figured him out and claims his problem is loneliness, but Trevor assures her he's
fine with her company. He leaves after finishing his coffee and leaving a good tip but without
touching the pie. Moments later, back in his apartment, Trevor is going through his insomnia by
watching tv and reading a book - he almost manages to doze off, but the noise made by the book
falling to the floor startles him awake. Next, he decides to weigh himself, and when he notices he's
now one hundred twenty-one pounds, he writes it on a post-it note and sticks it on the wall
next to all the other annotations of his weight with numbers that have done nothing but go down.
Then he starts cleaning the bathroom floor with a toothbrush and some bleach, which he ends up
emptying pretty quickly, so he writes a reminder to buy more on yet another post-it note that he
sticks to the refrigerator. The next day at work, Trevor is called to his boss' office,
who is worried about his health and wonders if he is doing drugs. Trevor assures them he's fine, but
he's still asked for a urine sample so they can run some tests. Afterward, he goes to the parking
slot to have a smoke, and for some reason, he's bothered by the sight of the vehicle's lighter.
He tries to sleep a bit, but he's interrupted by a red car that has parked next to him,
driven by Ivan, who is also smoking and wearing a big pair of sunglasses. The man introduces himself
as another coworker that Trevor may've not seen before because he works in the pit with Reynolds.
After some chitchatting, Ivan leaves, and Trevor can't help noticing his peculiar boots.
Later, when he goes to see Stevie, he is too tired to do anything with her other than rest.
When her ex calls and interrupts their time together, she tells him to call later because
she's busy and calls him a psycho. The following day, Miller asks Trevor to help him with one of
the machines, and after Miller promises the safety is on as regulations require,
Trevor keeps only half his attention on it while he watches the other workers around the factory.
He sees Ivan working nearby and is suddenly startled when the man makes a gesture of cutting a
throat, causing him to step back and accidentally turn on the machine they're working on.
Miller's hand gets stuck in it and they aren't incapable of freeing him until it is too late:
he loses his arm. After calling his superiors for help, Trevor checks on Ivan, but he's gone.
When he returns home, he washes his hands with bleach and throws up in the toilet before writing
down his weight as one hundred nineteen. While having dinner, he opens a letter that warns him
he may lose power soon if he doesn't pay his debt, so Trevor makes another post-it note reminding
himself to pay utilities and when he goes to stick it on the refrigerator, he finds a little
piece of paper already there with the beginning of a game of hangman. Surprised and confused,
he decides to take the rent money to his landlady Mrs. Shrike and take the chance to ask her if
she's seen anyone hanging around his apartment or anything unusual in general, but she hasn't.
The next day, Trevor's bosses interrogate him about the accident, and he admits it was all his
fault for having gotten distracted by Ivan. Nobody understands what he's talking about because there
is no Ivan working there, which he confirms when he looks for him but finds him nowhere.
Feeling rather disorientated after this talk, Trevor goes to the airport to have his usual
at María's, who wonders why he drives all the way to the airport just for coffee.
When the subject of mother's day comes up, Trevor mentions his mom passed away some time ago,
so María invites him to come with her and her son to the amusement park, which he accepts. Things at
the factory change from now on, Trevor's coworkers start watching him with distrust and they even
admit to him that they don't want him there. As he's leaving the building to go home, he notices
Ivan driving away in his red car, so Trevor gets on his truck and follows him until their vehicles
are next to each other in front of the red lights. Trevor wants Ivan to tell his superiors about what
happened, which he refuses, but Ivan does accept to talk to Trevor privately and asks him to follow
him to a bar. After ordering a whiskey even if he usually doesn't drink, Trevor asks Ivan some
questions about work, but Ivan dodges them all and instead shows him his deformed hand.
Trevor tries asking again and Ivan just tells them his coworkers are messing with
him by pretending Ivan doesn't exist before he goes to the toilet, so Trevor takes the chance
to go through this wallet for clues and finds a picture of Ivan on a fishing trip with Reynolds.
Starting to think this is all a conspiracy, Trevor steals the photograph before returning home,
where he calls Reynolds and tells him he has proof on him and he's gonna use it, but Reynolds simply
hangs up. When he goes to the kitchen, he finds that the hangman note has been drawn on: the
stick figure now has a head and a body, and the letters E and R have been added at the end of it.
Freaking out, Trevor throws the note in the trash and goes to see Stevie, who at first asks him to
come back in an hour because she has company, but she takes care of it when he begs for her help.
Trevor tells her about the accident and how his coworkers don't want him there,
which he doesn't blame them for but he finds these little games of theirs very weird. It's then that
he realizes the answer to the hangman could be Tucker, but Stevie points out that if they wanted
him out, they would've already fired him. Mother's day comes and Trevor goes to the amusement park
with María and her son Nicholas. While taking a picture of them in front of the carrousel, he
notices some strange glowing next to them and gets distracted, but when María asks, he just says he's
getting nostalgic because he used to come here as a kid. Their fun is interrupted by María getting
a call from his ex, so Trevor offers to take Nicholas on a ride so she can speak privately.
On their way there, he tells the boy that his father left him when he was a child and he
didn't appreciate how much his mother did for him until he was an adult, so Nicholas should
appreciate María as well. The ride Trevor chooses for them is horror-themed and called "Route 666",
and their decorations are pretty standard at the beginning, but soon the imaginary starts
growing extremely disturbing for a family game. There are body parts being hacked, a hanged man,
a motel depicting lecherous acts, and a very realistic car crash scene. When the option
comes to choose between the path to hell and the path to salvation, Nicholas goes against Trevor's
request and chooses hell, where the flashing lights cause Trevor to see visions of various
uncomprehensible things and Nicholas to have an epileptic seizure. Trevor picks him up and rushes
out as he cries out for help, but María arrives and tells him an ambulance won't be necessary,
this is normal and it passes soon. Moments later, Trevor takes them to their home on his truck,
and María invites him to come in and have a drink with her after putting Nicholas to bed.
Trevor can't help noticing a strange clown-like statue and a beautiful glass bowl in her living
room, getting a sense of deja-vu again. Once María brings their glasses of wine, she asks him why he
always leaves such generous tips, and he replies it's because he wants to thank her for her company
as well. María tells him he doesn't need to buy her companionship and he can just take her out
to a movie someday, which he accepts before going to the kitchen to pour some more wine.
There, he finds a Mother's day card with the same kind of stick figure he saw on his hangman note.
Getting more worried, the first thing he does when he arrives home later is
to retrieve the note from the trashcan and fill the spaces with the word "mother". Afterward,
he retrieves an old photo album from his closet and finds a picture of his mother and him as
a kid in front of the carrousel in a position incredibly similar to María and Nicholas' own
picture. The following day, Trevor is sent to work on a different machine from usual. He sees
Miller has come by to say his final goodbyes and get paid, so Trevor takes the chance to apologize
and tell him he can count on him for anything, but Miller promises there are no hard feelings.
When he goes back to working on the machine, it activates and captures his arm like it happened
to Miller. As he cries out for help, Trevor reaches out with his free hand and grabs a
random tool that he uses to close the distance to the power button and turn the machine off.
His coworkers arrive then and help him get unstuck, but Trevor isn't grateful - in fact,
he starts causing a scene, believing one of them did it on purpose. When Reynolds points out he's
imagining things again, Trevor asks him about Ivan and searches his wallet for the photo that could
prove the conspiracy but he can't find it. Tucker comes to check on him and Trevor finally loses it,
pushing his superior against a machine with the intention of beating him up. His coworkers pull
them apart before Tucker finally fires him. When he goes back to his apartment,
he finds out his electricity has been disconnected because he never paid the bill, so he uses a
yellow flashlight to search the entire place for the photograph to no avail. There's a dark liquid
coming out of his refrigerator as well, but he never notices it. Next, he returns to the bar,
but he can't find Ivan there either. When he goes to the bathroom to wash his hands with bleach,
he sees a familiar pair of boots under the door of a stall and decides to open it, only to find
a couple getting intimate. Afterward, he goes to see Stevie and finds her with a bruise on her eye,
which she calls an occupational hazard. After they make love, she asks him when he's going to
save her from this life, because she's willing to give up being a callgirl if he wants her to,
and he accepts. When he returns to his apartment later, he turns on lanterns to make up for the
lack of power and gets worried when he hears someone forcing the door open, but it's only Mrs.
Shrike. She's come over because there's a leak in her apartment and she's sure it's coming from his,
she also takes notice of a terrible smell. Trevor tells her there's no leak and sends
her away before checking the kitchen, where the refrigerator is leaking blood everywhere and the
note on its door shows the hangman has been drawn on again. The letters I and L have been added, so
this time, Trevor thinks the answer is Miller. The next day, Trevor visits Miller at his house and
accuses him of having turned on the machine that got him as revenge. Miller tries to ignore him,
but when Trevor insists, he punches him on the groin and kicks him out of his property. Outside,
he finds Ivan and his red car waiting for him, so Trevor assumes he's been working with Miller.
He rushes to his truck and starts following him to the countryside, this allows him to get close
enough to see the license plate. He also notices there's someone on the passenger seat next to
Ivan, which distracts him and almost causes him to crash against another truck. Luckily he dodges
it just in time, but now his own vehicle refuses to go on any longer, and Ivan manages to escape.
He returns to the city and visits the DMV to get some information on the license plate,
the clerk explains those details are private unless some crime has been committed. Trevor
goes out on the street and, after several minutes of hesitation, he throws himself in front of a
moving car. With enough bruises to be believable, he goes to the police station and fills in a fake
report on a hit-and-run. While sitting in the waiting room he almost falls asleep,
but he's interrupted by a cop who tells him they investigated the license plate and the red car
appears to be registered as Trevor's, it was also reported as wrecked a year ago. As Trevor starts
to feel disorientated again, the police officer points out filling fake reports is a felony,
so Trevor starts running away before they can arrest him. With two cops closely chasing him,
Trevor takes the stairs to the subway station and escapes by opening a manhole he finds there,
making his way down into the sewers, where he finds two different paths to choose from again.
Since there is a person walking on the bright path, he takes the dark one instead.
By the time night falls, Trevor is back on his truck and drives back to his apartment,
but he sees the police at the door talking to Mrs. Shriek, so instead he goes to visit Stevie.
While she bathes him and takes care of his bruises, she insists on taking him to a hospital,
but he refuses and asks her if he can stay the night. Stevie tells him he can stay as
many nights as he wants and confesses his love for him. Afterward, while she's cooking dinner
and talking about possible jobs for her, Trevor puts on some clothes that her regular clients
leave there and sees a familiar pair of boots in the closet. His mood only gets worse when
he finds the picture of Ivan and Reynolds on a frame and he furiously starts making a scene,
accusing Stevie of being Ivan's ex and hiding him somewhere while he continues to plot his revenge
on Trevor for sleeping with his former girlfriend. Stevie doesn't understand what he's talking about,
since she found that picture with the tip money he left her and she thought he had wanted her to
have a photo of him. Now it's Trevor's turn to be confused, not understanding why Stevie keeps
saying that the person on the picture with Reynolds isn't some Ivan but Trevor himself.
Refusing to look at the photograph directly, Trevor calls Stevie a liar and insults her with
a slur, so Stevie slaps him and kicks him out as she calls him a psycho. Trevor drives away,
thinking about all the times she was on the phone with her ex and assuming it must've been Ivan,
he also thinks she was the person he saw on the passenger seat. When he makes it to the airport,
he goes straight to his favorite diner, only to find there's another waitress instead of María.
The woman tells him there has never been a María working there, and she's always been
the one serving Trevor his coffee. In fact, she's surprised to hear him talk now because
he's always been so quiet that she had thought he was a mute. Trevor starts making another scene,
accusing everyone in the area to be part of the conspiracy before leaving. In the parking lot, he
sees Ivan in his car and follows him back to town, where he parks in front of his own apartment. The
biggest surprise, however, is to find out that the person with him isn't Stevie: it's Nicholas.
Trevor follows them inside and finds Ivan playing with his knife in front of the mirror,
but Nicholas is nowhere in sight, and Ivan implies he's already killed him and the body is in the
tub. Furious, Trevor jumps on him and after they struggle over the knife, he manages to take it and
kill him. Afterward, he opens the shower curtains but finds the tub empty. Next he goes to check
his refrigerator, which he opens to find it full of spoiled food and rotten fish that matches the
one in the photograph, causing Trevor to finally remember it as it truly it is: the person with
Reynolds has always been him. The scene loops back to the beginning of the story then: Trevor
rolls Ivan's body inside the carpet and takes it to the sea, but when the carpet starts to unroll,
he finds nothing in there. The man using Trevor's yellow flashlight is Ivan. When he returns to his
apartment, Trevor looks at the post-it note asking him who he is while Ivan laughs behind him in
the mirror and finally remembers what actually happened a year ago. While driving his red car,
Trevor got distracted while searching for the lighter and accidentally ran over Nicholas.
The sunglasses, the car, the boots, all the things have always belonged to Trevor,
who instead of staying at the crime scene drove away as María made it to her dead son's side.
Ivan, the waitress that looked like María, and the time they spent together have all
been hallucinations caused by his own guilt. So was the insomnia. After crying for a long time,
he completes the hangman to form the word "killer" with permanent ink instead of pencil like the
previous times. Some days later, Mrs. Shrike comes to see him after she heard he is moving out.
In his boxes, she finds all the things Trevor had seen in María's apartment,
and when she asks if she could buy the bowl, he reveals this stuff used to belong to his
mother. He sends her away after promising her a truck will come by to pick up his things later,
then he goes back to the road with Ivan in the passenger seat. Originally he was on his way to
the airport, but when the time comes once again to choose a road, this time he chooses salvation
and turns his truck back into town. Trevor goes to the police station to turn himself in for
having killed Nicholas, and when the cops take him to a cell, he finally gets to sleep again.