PLOT: After a young couple witnesses a gruesome highway accident, they soon realize they did not leave the crash scene alone, as a demonic presence called the Passenger won’t stop until it claims them both.
REVIEW: When I first saw the teaser for Passenger months ago, I thought it was one of the scariest trailers I’d seen in a while. It had that perfect “what the hell was that?” feeling that made me want to see the movie immediately. I was so in that I refused to watch any more trailers because I didn’t want any of the scares ruined for me.
Funny enough, the joke was on me. That teaser is basically a shortened version of the opening sequence, so when the big scare finally came, I saw it coming. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a pretty good preview of the movie itself.
Passenger may as well have been called Jump Scare: The Movie.
André Øvredal knows how to stage a horror sequence, and there are definitely moments where the movie works. But so many of the scares are telegraphed from a mile away. You can feel the movie winding itself up before every loud noise or sudden face in the frame. After a while, it stops being scary and starts feeling like you’re waiting for someone to clap behind your head.
The setup is solid. Maddie (Lou Llobell) and Tyler (Jacob Scipio) are a young couple who’ve given up their apartment to live the whole van-life dream. Tyler seems way more into it than Maddie, who already looks like she’s realizing that “freedom on the open road” may not be the life she envisioned.
After an effective opening involving two friends on the road and something very wrong lurking in the distance, Passenger shifts to Maddie and Tyler several weeks into their #vanlife. While looking for a place to park for the night, they come across a brutal car accident and realize way too late that they didn’t just witness something horrific. Soon, they realize something has latched onto them. A ghost hitchhiker, a demon, a curse, a road monster, or whatever the hell you want to call it. The idea is creepy because road horror should be easy to make scary. You’re trapped in a vehicle, stuck in unfamiliar places, and the whole point of driving away is that you’re supposed to be able to escape. So, what happens when you can’t?
That’s where Passenger should really cook. And sometimes, it really does.
The opening is easily one of the film’s strongest parts. The cinematography is gorgeous, and there’s an eerie control to the way it builds. Øvredal has already proved himself with films like Trollhunter, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and you can feel that experience here. If this movie were in the hands of a less-seasoned director, it could’ve been a road I’d never want to travel again, and not in the good horror movie way. Øvredal keeps it watchable even when the script starts running on fumes.
And that’s really where the film struggles. The script from Zachary Donohue and T.W. Burgess is the weakest part of the whole thing. There’s some eye-rolling dialogue, and the lead characters just aren’t memorable enough. I’m not even exaggerating when I say I forgot their names almost immediately after walking out of the theater and had to look them up for this review. Funny enough, even IMDb didn’t have Lou Llobell’s character name listed when I checked. It’s Maddie (thanks, Wikipedia), but honestly, I might as well have called her Scared Girl.
That’s not really on Llobell, either. She does a decent job with what she’s given, and so does Scipio. Melissa Leo also shows up and gives the movie some extra credibility, even if her character mostly exists to explain the mythology. The actors aren’t the problem. They’re trying to sell a script that never gives them enough personality to make us truly care about them beyond “please don’t die.”
The mythology is also a little silly. I like it when horror movies build rules around a creature or curse, and Passenger tries to do that with its road symbols, warnings, and creepy old folklore. But the more the movie explains, the less interesting it becomes. The Passenger itself works better when it’s a shape in the dark, something half-seen, something that feels like it could appear in the rearview mirror at any second. Once the movie shows more, especially in its final form, it loses much of its power. Sometimes the scariest thing a horror movie can do is not explain itself to death.
Still, there are some great set pieces here. There’s a one-take sequence in a parking lot that is easily one of the highlights, and there’s another scene involving an outdoor movie in the woods that I really dug. I don’t want to spoil how those play out, but those are the moments where you see the better version of Passenger. The movie has style. It has atmosphere. It has a few nasty gore effects that hit harder than expected because they’re used sparingly. When the violence lands, it lands.
That’s what makes Passenger frustrating. It’s not a bad movie. It’s just one of those horror films where you can see the better version of it hiding inside the one you’re watching. The premise is there. The director is there. The cinematography is there. Several set pieces absolutely work. But the characters are thin, the dialogue gets rough, the mythology gets goofy, and the scares are way too easy to predict.
It even has the “getting yanked away on the ground while screaming towards the camera” move. Future horror directors: STOP. DOING. THIS. SHIT.
I wanted this to be scarier. I wanted the movie to live up to the promise of that teaser. It doesn’t quite get there. But I also can’t say I had a terrible time with it. There’s enough craft here, enough atmosphere, and enough fun horror nonsense to make it worth watching with a crowd. I genuinely screamed a few times.
So instead of getting in the left lane and passing this film entirely, I’d say load the car up with your friends and enjoy the ride. Just don’t expect it to take you anywhere you haven’t been before.
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