Sometimes people just... snap, and the lack of reason or rationality behind their sudden violent actions can be far more scary and disquieting than any explanation. Carter Smith's The Passenger is a frequently terrifying, often darkly hilarious and always deeply unsettling horror/thriller that is so blessedly unpredictable from scene to scene thanks to its incredibly well written antagonist, that the expression 'edge of your seat' doesn't quite cover it. Randolph (Johnny Berchtold) is a meek, introverted fast food worker who is bullied by those around him until one day his quiet co worker Benson (Kyle Gallner) abruptly loses it, shooting up the place with a shotgun and kidnapping Randolph at gun point to join him on a hellish, meandering suburban odyssey of violence and anguished introspect. Benson wants to help Randolph out of his shell and using his own brand of anarchic psychosis, provides a demented road trip setting for him to work out his issues. One idea the film immediately shuts down is that total cop-out that he 'isn't real' or is just a manifestation of the protagonist's own mental issues. I hate that trope, it's lazy, overused and tacky. Benson is *very* real and Gallner's performance is a stunning ride through a sardonic heart of darkness, he makes the fellow despicable, charming, mournfully jaded and yet somehow vaguely sympathetic, hinting at his own dark history without ever fully pulling back the curtain. The film goes to some wild and weird places, never quite hitting the beats we're used to in thrillers like this, always taking a fresh, different path through its narrative and ending up somewhere just south of the twilight zone, like the Hitcher was discharged from a psychiatric ward still not fully quite right in the head. Great film, a total ride from beginning to end.
Review of The Passenger
