THE PASSENGER
Starring: Kyle Gallner, Johnny Berchtold, and Liza Weil
Director: Carter Smith
KATIE
The Passenger immediately intrigued and unsettled me with its chilling opening scene, establishing a sense of unease and tension that never subsides. This gripping and strangely intimate thriller features amazing performances by Johnny Berchtold (Randy) and Kyle Gallner (Benson, his shotgun-wielding co-worker). The pair have an unlikely chemistry, and their relationship is multi-faceted and almost moving, to the point that, despite Randy’s flaws and Benson’s violent outbursts, I was still rooting for them. The plot is simple yet effective, creating space for Gallner’s incredibly powerful and nuanced performance, which allows the relationship to be the beating heart of the film.
QUENTIN
Though not incredibly original…seriously, it’s like someone said, “what if we remade A Perfect World with a few slight tweaks?…The Passenger remains surprisingly effective for such a simple, under-the-radar suspense movie. Kyle Gallner once again crushes a performance that will come and go without much fanfare, while well-trodden themes of trauma and its long-lasting impact are well-explored from multiple angles. It’s admittedly a very short list, but this is easily the best original movie released by MGM+ so far, and it shows that the relatively new streamer could have some potential in the small-scale film game.
PAIGE
With no expectations going in, The Passenger is a lean, mean, and gory machine. This Blumhouse-produced film is a slow-burn thriller turned therapy session that is an insane and wild ride from start to finish. It’s mainly a two-man show that is carried by the superb acting from its two leads, Johnny Berchtold and Kyle Gallner, the latter of which keeps delivering stellar performance after stellar performance. The thing is, though… there’s no real climax to the story to leave you completely satisfied.
NICK
Following up his impressive turn in What Comes Around (which I had the pleasure of seeing at TIFF last year under the title Roost), Kyle Gallner once again steals The Passenger with a magnetic performance. Whether he’s inconspicuously lurking in the background or standing front-and-center, my focus was on his character. That's not a knock on co-star Johnny Berchtold either, who also has a solid showing. It’s the story where the hiccups come. What starts as an intriguing character study becomes too ambiguous for its own good, and its lack of answers ends things on a sour note. It's good, but these performances deserved great.
