Over the years,Kyle Gallnerhas quietly turned himself intoone of Hollywood’s leading scream kings. You may have first met him in the 2009 double horror wallop ofThe Haunting in ConnecticutandJennifer’s Body. He was one of the stars of the much-malignedA Nightmare on Elm Streetreboot in 2010, which isso much better than the hate it gets, and lived to sleep another day. In the past few years, he battled Ghostface (it didn’t go so well) in 2022’sScreamand was one of the heroes inSmile.
In 2023, withThe Passenger, Gallner didn’t battle a man with knives for fingers, a killer in a mask, or some incomprehensible force. Instead, his character, Benson, battles himself following a mass murder spree. After kidnapping a witness along with a timid young man named Randy, played by an equally impressiveJohnny Berchtold(Dog Gone), the unlikely pair flee the scene of the crime in aroad trip film that never leaves the town they’re in. It’s not the cops they’re ultimately running away from, but themselves. By going nowhere, Benson and Randy go everywhere.
The Passenger
A man is forced to face his fears and confront his troubled past. He must find a way to survive when his co-worker snaps and goes on a violent killing spree.
If you watch the trailer forThe Passenger, you might think you have it all figured out.It focuses mostly on Benson (Kyle Gallner’s)with his chilling voice heard throughout and is immersed in violent shots. Without giving more away than what the trailer shows, Benson commits mass murder at a fast food restaurant where he works with Randy (Johnny Berchtold). After letting Randy live, we see several other scenes with Benson pointing a gun, and then punching a man repeatedly in a parking lot. Benson and Randy are then in a car driving along barren fields as cop cars fly by blaring their sirens. When Randy asks Benson why he’s doing this,his kidnapper tells Randythat he finds him pathetic and it bugs him.He also finds his victim fixable, telling him, “When you were standing there, watching me, waiting for me to kill you, that was the only thing I believed.” Benson wants to help Randy for his own good, but he needs him to stay out of his way.
At first glance,The Passengerlooks like something we’ve seen before. Road trip crime movies are almost their own subgenre.Warren BeattyandFaye Dunawayperfected itin 1967 withBonnie and Clyde.Geena DavisandSusan Sarandongave us a more fun, but equally tragic version of this type of storyin 1991’sThelma & Louise.Oliver Stone’sNatural Born Killersin 1994 hadWoody HarrelsonandJuliette Lewison the run in a film as bleak as it gets. Just a year before, Lewis was in a similar film withBrad PittcalledKalifornia.
From ‘Scream’ to ‘Smile,’ Kyle Gallner Is Our Modern Scream King
He’s been the hero, the villain, and everything in between.
On the surface,The Passengerseems to match its peers: a guy commits a crime, the criminal takes a victim hostage, the criminal flees and commits more crimes. The victim prevails; the end. Sure, some of that is accurate, butThe Passengeris so much more than its predecessors. For example,it breaks the moldin a moment of peril when Benson takes Randy hostage and flees. As he’s talking about how far away he can get before the cops find the crime scene, the truth is that he never actually leaves the city at all.
Randy Isn’t Just a Helpless Passenger to a Madman
One of the trailer taglines for the movie is “Confront your past to survive the present.” Read into that, and you’ll see thatThe Passengergoes deeper than a surface-level movie about a violentroad trip. Even further to the point, the tagline on the poster is “Ride. Or die.” So what does that mean to the audience and the deeper context of the movie?
Berchtold’s Randolph “Randy” Bradley is presented as our probable hero, but he’s not even the hero of his own life before Benson screws it all up. He is a timid young man, quiet and soft-spoken. He’s lived in the same town his entire life, and despite being really smart,has done nothing with his existence. He works in fast food, and while that’s fine, we can see that he’s capable of so much more. His manager sees it too. He wants Randy to think about being a manager at another location, and although that seems doable enough, for someone like Randy, we can tell that this is nearly impossible for him to comprehend.
Randy is meek because of his past. He did something bad as a child, and unable to move past the guilt that plays the event in his head relentlessly,he lets that trauma consume him. It’s not hard to see thatThe Passengerhas a double meaning.When Randy is bullied at work, causing another quiet co-worker, Benson, to snap and shoot everyone dead, he becomes an actual passenger to his hostage taker. However, the deeper context of Randy’s character is that he was already a passenger to his mind. If he doesn’t learn from the past, take hold of the wheel of his life, and stop being a passenger, he will die.
Benson Isn’t Your Typical Killer in Control in ‘The Passenger’
That’s already clever enough, and though Randy is timid and not a take-charge type, we root for him, especially as we learn what happened in his past. Beneath that pain is a good person struggling to be set free.The Passengercould have just settled for that and made Benson a cookie-cutter bad guy who forces Randyto take charge of his life and save himself, but there is so much more going on than that. Benson has his pain too. He’s not a simple stereotype, but another person controlled by his trauma. He’s also a passenger but in a different way.Whereas Randy goes inward, Benson lashes out.
The road trip Benson and Randy take isn’t what you’re used to. It’s not about a flight from a scene, being chased down by the police. It’s about a flight from the past as it screams toward you, nipping at your heels. That doesn’t meanThe Passenger is only a character study where the road trip is in one’s mind. There is much violence to be found. Blood is shed. People die. The cinematography is so grim and Benson is so scary in his actions thatThe Passengerborders on being a horror film.
The Passengeris everything you’ve come to expect from the genre but blended and served up in a way you’ve never tasted.The flight from the past can be more chaotic and suspensefulthan any of the typical police chases or two characters driving off a cliff. Viewers can certainly go into it with expectations but be prepared to be a passenger for a ride that makes you think as much as it makes you clench your seat.
