Most of the scenes in the series A patient, available on Disney+ starting November 30, takes place in the same scene where two characters face each other. The script by Joel Fields and Joseph Weisberg seeks to create a sense of imminent danger, but also intimacy. The strangest combination leads to almost theatrical production on a terrifying background. What would happen if the killer tried to understand the limits of the psychiatric and emotional nature of his desire to kill?
The answer is fear. At the same time, the search for the essential makes us human, in contrast to the predatory instinct. Dr. Alan Strauss (the eminent Steve Carell) must take on Sam (Donal Gleason) in a duel of intellect and intellectual resistance. But not only in order to delve into the inner darkness of the latter. Also, in order not to die at the hands of Sam, a serial killer who decided to find an explanation for his cruel nature.
From the first chapter A patient makes it clear that the course will be brutal and precise. Sam kidnaps Alan and chains him up in the basement of the house where he lives. Then he makes the most unique and terrifying request. He needs you to “heal” him and prevent him from continuing to kill in horrifying ways. Do it with all the tools available to you. It’s a race against time. Sam will kill again very soon. The victim may have been outside. But, most likely, Alan will pay with his life for any hesitation or inability to understand the psyche of his kidnapper.
When the patient is a criminal
At first glance, the distorted but linear premise is actually a brilliant exploration of psychological stress turned into suffering. At the same time, an eerie vision that feeds on the inner shadows of ordinary life. As a production A patient he has a tremendous ability to contain the most terrible elements in a rarefied and pessimistic atmosphere.
“Perhaps he will not survive,” Alan says in horror. Of course you know what you are dealing with. Sam is a criminal, but also a creature bordering on dehumanization. Between the two of them, his aggressive urge to kill is the manifestation of an insatiable and unpredictable point within him.
The most curious thing about A patient the fact is that the bloody nature of Sam’s experiences fades into the background. The script plays on the idea that the character goes through an internal tension of guilt and anger, but off screen. During the story He’s just a pale, tense man who needs to be listened to.. Which even demands Alan’s full attention with desperation bordering on obsession.
Got into the mouth of a monster
On the other hand, Alan knows that he can only save his life if he can connect with this criminal who enjoys violence. One, also aware of himself and responsible for his actions. The intellectual battle between the two is much more than an idea that comes out in carefully crafted lines.
This is an essential idea of good and evil, bound by the need to be understood. Sam seeks healing, but not redemption.. scenario A patient In fact, he eschews moral judgment and emphasizes the state of tension of darkness that suffocates his character.
For this serial killer who needs to be “cured”, guilt is not an option. It is also not a state of transgression that goes through a clearer perception of the intellectual and psychic gap from which he suffers.
Sam Gleason kills not for pleasure, but out of rage. Because of the effective, direct and desperate need for a certain order around them. AT A patientTo survive, Alan needs to understand that balance, that boundary point between shadows and reality through which his captor travels.
Pain, fear, blood A patient
One of the places of greatest interest A patient the point is that it avoids any common ground with serial killer stories. None of its chapters directly explore police raids, crime scenes, or what goes on outside of Sam’s story. On the rare occasions when it is mentioned, the perception becomes exciting, dangerous and frightening. The killer speaks of himself with an eloquence of anger, discontent and an increasingly dark existential void. But at the same time, discover the multiple layers that surround his killer drive.
For Sam, murder is no ordinary thing. It is also not a perception of your personality or behavior. It is an event on the periphery of his life that transports him to an eerie space where he gives free rein to his grotesque impulses. In turn, Alan, little by little, understands the game of cat and mouse, adapted to the confused experience he is trapped in.
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A crack in reality – the concept of man – from which his captor contemplates him. Argument A patient He then focuses on the deadly bonds that unite the hostage and the man who holds him captive. He details them until the nature of evil – that ghostly abstraction that looms over Alan like a threat – is revealed in its entirety. Perhaps the most powerful and well-constructed point of this magnificent narrative curiosity.
