Where I Watched It: MGM Plus

English Audio Description?: YES!

I wasn’t even looking for audio description and it found me. I randomly selected this title I had never seen, and it surprisingly had an audio description track. I will caution those looking to run out and get that MGM Plus subscription, in my brief deep dive, I only found a handful of titles. I didn’t find any of their original series with audio description.

But, now I can say I’ve seen the Brad Anderson psychological thriller The Machinist, which somehow feels like a box checked off. I think it’s remembered a lot more for the still image of Bale in the film looking incredibly gaunt, as he did lose a ton of weight for this film. Here, he plays a man whose poor diet and lack of sleeep is causing his reality to come into question. Can he trust anyone? Can he even trust himself?

Unreliable narrator projects are always a fun watch, but I’ve seen them done not well before. I am not a big fan of johnny Depp’s Secret Window, however, this same genre has given us such classics like Fight Club and Memento. When done right, having a narrator whose own perspective is altered can really make for an interesting and compelling film. Here, Anderson relies a lot on Bale’s performance to carry the film. This really is all him, even though there are other cast members. It’s all up to Bale to make this film work, which he mostly does.

Anderson also used an atypical film score that I wasn’t expecting. For a film that walks the fine line of horror, it was almost like a cross between an old Hitchcockian score or one with the quirks of something Danny Elfman might have written for Tim Burton. It helps balance the film in this unusual nature, where it isn’t really a horror film. There are horrifying things that happen, but in the sense of will this movie scare you? no. And even the gore is well placed so that it isn’t really even meant to be a gross out splatter porn film either. It just has things and elements that are horrifying.

The audio description, done by Willliam michael Redmond (I believe), is incredibly descriptive when it comes to the haunting look of Bale’s withering lead Trevor. The description spends quite a bit of time at the beginning letting you know that you can see his bones, and his spinal column under the skin. He also constantly weighs himself, and he writes his number on a post it, which is also narrated for us. That way, we can keep up with his decline.

In a somewhat spoilery moment here, I do have to talk about the one moment I didn’t like in the description. you do have to remember that this whole film will make you question what is real anyway, so this may or may not be a spoiler depending on how you interpret Trevor’s experience. Later on in the film, Trevor opens up his freezer, and the description we are given is that his freezer is full of fish “including a head”. Now, in that moment, I assumed fish head. because that’s what we were talking about. But, as some things fall out, it’s revealed to be a human head when it hits the floor. Something tells me that a sighted audience would have known the difference when the freezer door opened, even if they couldn’t see a face. We should have been told it was a human head in the freezer with the fish, and then perhaps whose it was when it fell out. Remember that the audio description is meant to close the gap between us and our sighted friends and family and other members of the audience. If they are all gasping and horrified before us, then we are not having that shared experience, especially on something that just seemed so easy.

This is definitely not a film I’d ever want to watch again. It’s dark, but does feature a fantastic performance from Christian Bale that warrants at least a watch. Don’t expect to be cheered up here. This is not a happy film. But, perhaps, if more people were to watch Brad Anderson’s earlier work, he might still be directing films today. Now, he just does TV episodes. it’s a shame.

Episode Grade: B