Mark Reviews Movies: THE INFERNAL MACHINE

The Infernal Machine, Paramount Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 22, 2022

A reclusive writer, seemingly haunted by what his work inspired, has to confront a harasser and his own demons in The Infernal Machine. Writer/director Andrew Hunt's movie begins with a decent idea and a promising puzzle, but as the true nature of that mystery unravels, so, too, does any focus or consistency within the story.

The writer is Bruce Cogburn (Guy Pearce), who now lives a secluded life somewhere in the American Southwest more than two decades after the success of his first and only novel. We soon learn that a mass shooter in the 1980s believed there was a secret message in Bruce's book and acted according to his interpretation of it.

It's a fine start for this story and this character, who is also being hounded by an aspiring writer looking for advice from Bruce. Letters keep arriving in the writer's post office box, and soon enough, they're being delivered directly to his home. Bruce repeatedly calls a phone number included in the letters, politely asking the sender to stop and then threatening some violence if the letter-writer doesn't quit.

Pearce is solid here as the frustrated and troubled author, and Hunt creates an eerie atmosphere with the unseen and potential threat of Bruce's fan/stalker. His absence from the story in any physical form certainly points us in a very specific direction—or misdirection—of what's going on in this tale, obviously, and that game of establishing and deflecting expectations is some fun—if only for a while.

The idea that Bruce's book might have directly inspired Dwight (Alex Pettyfer) to murder opens an unsettling line of thinking about the influence of art. Such ideas, though, only exist as part of a story that has too many twists and turns to really consider them. As for the cop played by Alice Eve, there's no way of discussing her character without hinting at the story's biggest surprise, which also doesn't amount to much for all of the work Hunter does to hide it.

By the end, of course, the reality of what's happening is revealed, and it's a disappointment. That's not because of what's exposed about this character, his past, and the real secret he's holding. It's because Hunt, adapting a podcast drama written by Louis Kornnfeld, ultimately shows that he has been intentionally deceiving and distracting us from that truth with ideas that are both far more intriguing and, finally, pretty nonsensical when all is said and done.

The plot of The Infernal Machine keeps twisting and twisting itself into such a tangled knot that it's difficult to determine or recall how and why each of those moves gets the story where it finally lands. We might forgive such maneuvers if the movie had something to say about this character or any of its tantalizing ideas, but in that regard, it's also a letdown.

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