Passenger

by Mike McGranaghan

Passenger does for road trips what Jaws did for grocery shopping, i.e. nothing. We’ve all taken long-distance treks where we got lost in a scary area, found ourselves spooked by another driver at night, or experienced the anxiety of ending up in an unfamiliar location. Seems like there’s a ton of potential in the concept of a couple going on a nightmarish car trip. Weirdly, this latest effort from director André Øvredal (The Last Voyage of the Demeter) finds almost none of that potential, repeatedly choosing silliness over scariness.

Tyler (Jacob Scipio) and Maddie (Lou Llobell) have decided to abandon their life in Brooklyn and travel the country in a van. After stumbling upon the aftermath of a fatal car accident, Maddie begins seeing images of a strange old man. He’s a demonic entity, known as the Passenger, who torments people just like them. Or so says van-life veteran Diana (Melissa Leo), whom they meet at an event called “Burning Van.” (Ha, ha.) The longer they drive, the more relentless the Passenger’s attacks become.

A premise like this depends on internal logic. We need to understand how the paranormal aspects work. Passenger fails on that count. The demon can allegedly make his victims see things that aren’t there. Okay, that’s acceptable. But how is he able to physically move the van without Maddie hearing it? And why, when she and Tyler need to drive over a field of corpses that aren’t really there, does the vehicle bounce up and down as it goes over each body? These are the kinds of questions that spring to mind during the story. If you’re thinking of questions like that, something clearly isn’t working.

With more logic, the Passenger could have been frightening. Instead, the film leans on cheap jump scares you can see coming a mile away. Those scares quickly become repetitive, and they build to an absurd finale that was obviously designed to allow for a heavily ironic payoff, coupled with a stupid Bob Ross reference. The late painter actually proves to be a major plot point in the movie, presumably to offer some levity. Dropping those references into scenes that are supposed to be shocking doesn’t work.

Horror elements are layered around the relationship between Tyler and Maddie. The latter realizes after several weeks that a nomadic lifestyle is not for her, posing a problem because it’s her boyfriend’s literal dream. That dramatic idea is similarly limp thanks to the characters’ incessant dullness. We know almost nothing about them other than this one key factor. Whenever the picture isn’t trafficking in lame scares, it’s boring us with an underdeveloped relationship.

In fairness, Melissa Leo is very good, despite Diana being a faucet for exposition. I kind of wish the story had been about her instead. Also, Øvredal and cinematographer Federico Verardi shoot the movie with enough visual style to intermittently make you forget how goofy the whole thing is. 2026 has been a rich year for the horror genre, with entries like Obsession, Primate, and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. Their existence further underlines how weak Passenger is.