The Infernal Machine

The score is compellingly offbeat, flirting with church bells and what sounds like Tibetan prayer bowls, but the rest of this nervy, sweaty thriller gets a little bogged down in layers of futile intrigue.

Pearce stays true to form with a performance far more impressive, nuanced and crafted than the film perhaps deserves.

It’s unfortunate that video stores no longer exist, because The Infernal Machine would thrive as one of those rentals that a store carries only one or two copies of.

a sparse psychological tussle that feels like it’s from another decade, starting strongly but losing steam long before the final chapter.

Andrew Hunt also expands the scope of this paranoid mystery, transforming the one-sided exchange into a larger conspiracy-style thriller that takes on an intriguing meta-dimension...

This is a two-star film that gets an extra star for the commitment by Pearce.

Guy Pearce is great&#59; the movie is not.

An intriguing slo-burn psychological thriller with multi-layered narrative. A must-see for Guy Pearce’s fans and anyone up for a thought-provoking mystery.

Pearce's irrepressible talent means that he just about manages to sell his character's muddled world view, despite being given little to work with on the page. But the movie's real undoing is the lack of a well-drawn adversary to play opposite him.



The Infernal Machine goes from solid thriller to cliche in just a matter of minutes and wastes what may be one of Guy Pearce’s finest performances. This movie is far from bad but it never quite lives up to the grand intentions it builds early on.