The Passenger: The Psycho Thriller as Therapy

Movie info (Rotten Tomatoes):

Randy (Johnny Berchtold) is perfectly content fading into the background. But when his coworker Benson (Kyle Gallner) goes on a sudden and violent rampage leaving a trail of destruction in his wake, Randy is forced to face his fears and confront his troubled past to survive.

Review:

The Passenger, the new Amazon Prime Blumhouse thriller from director Carter Smith (The Ruins) is both a murderous therapy session and a roadtrip horror story. The murderer, Benson (Kyle Gallner of Smile) plays the psychiatrist to his unwitting captive-patient, Bradley (Johnny Berchtold), a conscientious burger joint employee that the murderous serial killer bent Benson saved from a rather cruel employee hazing. The rest of the film is a sort of therapy for Bradley induced by Benson through visiting past trauma sites. Demons are being exorcized for both. It all builds up to one giant violent primal screen and self-purging.

The Passenger is that kind of thriller where trauma, character and violence combine to allow both leads and a capable supporting cast to do some fine acting.

Gallner does some exceptional work as the chaos agent. His motive is explained in an almost throwaway bit of dialogue. “There’s something about you,” Benson tells his captive. “There’s something fixable — and I believe that.” Benson spares Bradley because he sees his intelligence and some sort of self-redemption for himself in their own interplay. This analysis vs self analysis mixed together with loud emotional bouts that turn violent when Benson’s own internal confrontations become too much is the psychological dynamic of The Passenger. Benson must build Bradley up in order to tear himself down. It’s a weird form of self-annihilation. Benson’s constant telling Bradley to stand up for himself is a way to fight and confront his own inner demons.

Berchtold as Bradley complements Gallner’s Benson emotional therapy with a nervous energy that gets more self assured as Benson wrestles with his demons. He’s the sanity that Benson is struggling with. The constant confusion of the other characters to know whether Bradley or Randy is his first or last name (it’s really Randy Bradley, a Freudian slip that adds greatly to Benson’s self convincing nature and eventual identity destruction) emphasizes this psychological reversal.

Liza Weil as a teacher that is Bradley’s nub for all his psychological quilt and self deprecation makes the most of her modest role and screen time. I wished her role had been expanded but the bare bones script by Jack Stanley and Smith’s directing makes less is more The Passenger guiding narrative principle. Its linearity and leanness is The Passenger main strength.

Smith and Stanley use of childhood trauma might be cliché but Weil’s performance as the forgiveness factor and the true psychological change agent helps make that particular element emotionally effective. Like, almost everything else in The Passenger, it works.