A Thing About Machines - Plot

Plot

Bartlett Finchley is an ill-tempered gourmet magazine critic who reviles humanity, though he seems to be lonely at the same time. He's as inept with machines as he is with people. Frustrated, he constantly abuses machines and starts to think machines are conspiring against him. The people he tells about this write him off as paranoid, but eventually every machine in his house (including his car) turns on him. His typewriter types the message, "GET OUT OF HERE FINCHLEY." The TV shows the same message on the screen, and a voice on the phone speaks the same words when he tries to make a call. His electric razor rises into the air to attack him, and slithers down the stairs in pursuit of him. Finchley runs from the house and is chased by his driverless car (a 1939 Lagonda coupe). The car chases him to his pool and pushes him in. He sinks to the bottom and drowns. When the police pull him out of the water, they cannot explain how he could sink to the bottom when he was not weighted down (normally, a body would float), nor could they explain the car nearby the pool. They theorize he may have had a heart attack.