On Evil Grounds (2007)

There’s something ominous about The Patient, a psychological thriller starring Steve Carell and Domhnall Gleeson that recently premiered on Hulu.  From the start, I found it hard to accept the premise at face value.  Between the flashbacks, the dream sequences, and the imagined scenarios by Carell’s character Dr. Strauss I thought perhaps something unseen brewed beneath the surface.  So I prepared myself for a twist early on.  Maybe Dr. Strauss is imagining this situation that he’s in.  Maybe his captor, Sam (Domhnall Gleeson), who we know little about, is some fictitious character meant to represent an obstacle in Dr. Strauss’s life.  Until the last couple of episodes, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

It did not happen, however.  The Patient is a psychological thriller, mostly bound by the four walls of a suburban home basement, the residence of a serial killer named Sam and his mother Candace (Linda Emond).  Candace literally lets her son get away with murder.

Carell plays a Jewish psychotherapist named Dr. Alan Strauss, a recently widowed father of two. One of his children is a practicing Orthodox Jew named Ezra, played by Andrew Leeds, who’s grown estranged from his father and his loosely held beliefs and religious faith.  

Dr. Strauss leads a pretty normal life whilst dealing with the loss of his wife, Beth (Laura Niemi).  He meets with Sam, who initially identifies himself as Gene.  Then suddenly we are in the basement of Sam’s house and Dr. Strauss is chained to the floor.  

Sam sits down with Dr. Strauss, and admits that he’s a serial killer and that he’s captured Dr. Strauss so that he may help Sam overcome his psychotic nature and his killing ways.