Liam Neeson is all aboard The Commuter in exclusive teaser trailer

Liam Neeson is going off the rails.

The upcoming thriller The Commuter finds the action star once again pairing up with director Jaume Collet-Serra, this time for a tense mystery set on a speeding commuter train. EW has the exclusive first look at the teaser trailer, which introduces Neeson as an insurance salesman named Michael — who unexpectedly gets caught up in a deadly criminal conspiracy.

“It’s the first time in my movies with him that he’s played just a regular guy,” Collet-Serra (The Shallows) says with a laugh.

As the first trailer reveals, Michael’s been commuting into New York City for the past 10 years. His decade-long routine is interrupted, however, by the arrival of a mysterious passenger played by Vera Farmiga, who asks him to solve a puzzle and uncover the identity of a hidden passenger on his train. What seems like a harmless psychological game soon turns deadly, as Michael races to win the game before the last stop.

The Commuter marks Neeson and Collet-Serra’s fourth movie together, after 2011’s Unknown, 2014’s Non-Stop, and 2015’s Run All Night. When they went looking for their next project, both actor and director gravitated toward The Commuter’s tight script and contained setting — especially because it reminded them of Non-Stop, which was set entirely on a moving airplane.

“We just like to tell the same stories,” Collet-Serra says. “Obviously, he does other types of movies, and I do other types of movies as well. But we really like to have a movie once in a while where we just do what we like. And what we like is a very tight thriller. Something Hitchcockian and fast-paced, with good actors in it and good dialogue and an interesting premise. It’s sort of like a little puzzle for the audience to solve. He enjoys those kinds of movies, I enjoy those kinds of movies, and we enjoy making them together.”

The Commuter will hit theaters Jan. 12, 2018.