DIRECTOR: Andrew Hunt
CAST: Guy Pearce, Alice Eve, Alex Pettyfer, Jeremy Davies, Iris Cayatte
RUNNING TIME: 111 mins
CERTIFICATE: 15
BASICALLY…: A reclusive author (Pearce) is terrorised by an obsessed fan…
NOW FOR THE REVIEW…
In a film that features one convoluted twist after another, perhaps the most unbelievable aspect about writer-director Andrew Hunt’s psychological thriller The Infernal Machine is star Guy Pearce’s choice of accent. The Australian actor here sports a northern British dialect, which in fairness he doesn’t do that bad a job at, but when you place this accent in the middle of the American desert, from a character who constantly sports typical American wear from a Stetson hat to a denim jacket, you often do wonder if perhaps he picked the wrong tongue for this kind of film. It’s a bit like putting Keith Lemon in the lead role of a film like Hell or High Water; it’s just distracting in how mismatched the regional accent appears to be in this particular type of neo-Western environment.
Nonetheless, it is hardly the most glaring flaw in the movie, which despite an intriguing set-up eventually loses its way as it becomes less and less focused on its own goals, and more on just appearing to be cleverer and more profound than it actually is.
The film centres around Bruce Cogburn (Pearce), a reclusive author living on a private compound in the middle of the California desert; he’s been in hiding ever since his novel, The Infernal Machine, was cited as inspiration for a deadly mass shooting, by young incarcerated killer Dwight Tufford (Alex Pettyfer). That doesn’t seem to have stopped a fan by the name of William DuKent from sending Bruce an endless supply of handwritten letters, asking for his feedback on his own novel, to which Bruce venomously rejects but soon cannot help but be intrigued by. However, when the letters begin pointing to a much more sinister intention, Bruce must do what he can to quell his obsessive new pen-pal, while also facing some of his own truths in the process.
Some of those truths might be somewhat obvious the more time that you spend with this main character, who doesn’t exactly seem like the kind of guy who would write something as vaguely controversial as the titular book (what it’s about isn’t even revealed until about halfway through the film), or at the very least something that would inspire real-world violence. However, even if you can quickly deduce what this guy’s backstory is, you’re still left with dozens of other threads that are introduced but just as quickly disregarded, many of which don’t make a shred of sense and leave you asking far more questions than it has answers to. It’s an overly busy narrative, one where Hunt somehow manages to keep so much vital information to his chest, but also reveal too much at the same time, making for a plot that’s ultimately unsatisfying and way too convoluted to logically accept.
However, while you may have trouble piecing together the intricate details of everything that Hunt gives us in his overly twisty script, The Infernal Machine works best when it’s just being a vehicle for Guy Pearce to impressively mumble his way through this kind of neo-Western. Awkwardly-placed accent aside, Pearce is very good in this, doing a fine job of conveying his character’s rampant flaws through drunken rants and soliloquies in front of his new guard dog. While his character is more or less every reclusive author stereotype in the book, with motivations and a backstory that makes less and less sense as the film goes along, the actor is certainly trying his hardest to make it work, and more often than not he is entertaining enough to watch, making the film almost worth seeing if you’re already a Guy Pearce fan and want to see another fun on-screen performance of his.
Unfortunately, the movie around him is largely a flat and unconvincing experience, mostly held back by a script that thinks perhaps a bit too much of itself to recognise its own fatal flaws, and is so fixated on delivering mind-blowing but ultimately nonsensical twists instead of a reasonable plot or character development, that your mind just simply can’t comprehend how much of a missed opportunity it may have been.
SO, TO SUM UP…
The Infernal Machine is an underwhelming psychological thriller that wastes a decent enough set-up on overly convoluted writing with twists and turns that make very little sense, which an entertaining lead turn by Guy Pearce can’t save from its infernal fate.
