[Editorial] Interview with Carter Smith director of The Passenger (2023)

Coming to Digital and On Demand on August 4th - the next big thriller from production powerhouse Blumhouse is Carter Smith’s The Passenger (2023).

Unlike the horror we’ve come to expect from Blumhouse – big budget CGI monsters, and houses haunted by jump scares in every corner - The Passenger is heavily grounded in the reality of trauma bonds and reckoning with lifelong guilt.

Fans of horrortok (that’s horror on tiktok for us over-30s) will recognise newcomer Johnny Berchtold as the meek Randy - a young man content with coming and going quietly, never drawing any attention to himself. 

Horror royalty Kyle Gallner stars as his coworker Benson who, seemingly out of nowhere, goes on a violent killing spree and decides to drag Randy along with him.

Over the next hour or so, Randy is forced to confront his own troubled past as he and Benson form an unlikely bond.

I sat down with Director Carter Smith (The Ruins, Swallowed) to discuss how the film came to be, and his experience of working on a script more emotionally driven than his previous body-horrors. 

LISTEN TO OUR HORROR PODCAST!

RELATED ARTICLES

---

---