We’ve had haunted house movies. Sure, but have we had a haunted van movie? That’s what Passenger amounts to at its most distilled form. This is a horror movie about a demonic force (the opposite of Saint Christopher) that has been chasing and killing travelers for hundreds of years. Basically, the way that this demonic force gets to you is that travelers stop when someone has been in a horrific accident or have to use the restroom or whatnot, and then they get marked. The two leads of Passenger, Maddie (played by Lou Llobell) and Tyler (played by Jacob Scipio), stop at the scene of an accident (from the prologue of the film) and their new van-life van gets marked by The Passenger.
From there, it’s a pretty standard horror story with the two of them getting attacked repeatedly by The Passenger while trying to figure out a way to get rid of it before it gets them. Now, the interesting thing about The Passenger is that it could feasibly kill them at any time, but it’s a sadistic demon and wants to see Maddie and Tyler suffer. That already makes the antagonist an interesting one and it makes the journey for Maddie and Tyler that much more invested because they could really die at any moment. There are times in the film where they’re offered a bit of protection in the form of Saint Christopher necklaces.
The rules of Passenger are also pretty interesting. They follow the old “hobo code” of travelers on the roads of the US when they were first being built. There’s an entire manual in the film that Maddie finds to follow, which would have been nice to get a bit more information out of for the audience.
A Silly Future Midnight Movie
Is Passenger a serious horror movie? No. At least it doesn’t play off like that. It’s a haunted house on wheels. The characters make exceedingly dumb decisions, some of the dialogue is hammy, and there are some logical inconsistencies. All of that does matter, but here, the film is so keenly aware of what it is, that its forgiveable.
If you’ve seen any of André Øvredal’s other films, you know he ratchets up the tension with the best of them. Some of the camera work in Passenger is wild. Setting a horror movie in a house is one thing, but having scares come at you from the back of a van is something really special in Passenger. The camera moves around, tricks the audience, and is actively against them when trying to scare the crap out of you.
I’m a seasoned horror fan and I was pulling my hat down over my eyes at some points with the tension being built in Passenger. So while the movie isn’t perfect by any means, and it might even be groan-worthy at some times with the dialogue, the scares are there.
By the end of the film, the audience was whooping and hollering, so it has that going for it with a third act that is explosive and filled with some original ideas and visuals. For the gore hounds out there, there’s also some nice practical effects when The Passenger decides to dial it up for the crowd.
Overall, Passenger does the job of giving scares and making a bit of new lore about a demonic traveler that could strike anywhere on the roads.
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