Quick Synopsis: A travelling couple are haunted by what’s essentially a hitchhiking demon.

The last André Øvredal film I reviewed was Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark back in 2019. I thoroughly enjoyed that, although I was surprised by it because I assumed it would be more kid-friendly/my first horror. I’ve also heard very good things about The Autopsy Of Jane Doe, The Last Voyage Of The Demeter, and Trollhunter, with all three of them being on my list to watch. I didn’t love Passenger, but it didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for his work. The most interesting things about Passenger are the things he brings to it. It’s far more visually interesting than similar films; at times, it’s close to art. Disappointingly, it does dip into the “random face jumps at the camera” scares, which are cliché to the point of boredom. Weirdly, there are times when I think it does a bit too much. Some scares are heavily signposted, and maybe it would have been better if they were a bit more subtle. The perfect example of this is a scene where Maddie (played by Lou Llobell) is trying to get to the van. She hears a noise and turns to look at the source, then turns back, and the van is further away. There are dramatic scare chords accompanying this happening. Personally, I would have liked it to be a bit more subtle, so the audience had to pay attention, putting them in the same place as the character: wondering if it is actually further away, or if her mind is playing tricks on her.

I didn’t know that much about Passenger. I saw the trailer months ago, but for some reason, the trailer wasn’t available online at the time, so I haven’t watched it again. I mainly remember it focusing on someone driving and seeing the same figure again and again by the side of the road. That kind of intrigued me, but I was curious as to how that could extend to a feature-length film. I mean, how can you get 90 minutes of someone driving and NOT picking up a hitchhiker? So I was doubtful it would have enough meat on its narrative bones. Good news, that’s not what the film is about. Bad news, it still doesn’t have enough meat. The main characters are cursed because they decide to stop their car (which kind of seems like this film is saying that stopping to help people is a bad thing and should be avoided, but what do I know?). So it’s somewhat ironic that the film itself keeps stopping. Weirdly, those are the parts of the film I think worked best. There’s an incredible scene where the two are watching Roman Holiday on a projector in the woods. It’s very sweet, the scares are subtle enough that they gradually build, and there’s actual tension. But then they get back into the van, and it turns into visual noise.

In contrast, the dumbest part is when they’re in the van and time suddenly skips forward to night. The set-up for this is that the entity is powerful at night and weakened during the day, so the characters think they’re safe in the day, but that safety is disrupted by the time skip. I would argue that manipulating time in such a manner requires immense supernatural power, much more than it would take to, say, loosen a wheel and cause a car crash. Or did he just make them fall asleep for that long? If that’s the case, why not kill or hurt them then? Also, why wake them up? They’re heading to the church of Saint Christopher, patron saint of travellers and the only place where someone would stand a chance of killing the entity. The characters don’t know where it is, so they have to look out for symbols and clues to try and find it. The characters appear to have travelled in the missing time. Here’s my issue: the demon wakes them up BEFORE they get a sign with a symbol on that tells them where the church is. If he can only timeskip a certain number of hours, why not wait until they’ve travelled a few more hours, THEN jump ahead so that they unknowingly drive past the only clue that’s visible from the roadside? They might have even taken the wrong exit and ended up avoiding it entirely. If anything, he got them closer towards it. He’s a video game boss who just happens to have the only weapon that defeats him in the hallway outside his dungeon.

On the upside, the lore is fantastic. It FEELS like a genuine urban legend. Specifically, an American one. It appears to be based on a few different ones rather than a single one. But when you watch it, it feels real, like the kind of thing travellers will tell each other. I’d have loved to have seen this as part of another movie, where we see new urban legends get told. But as a full movie? There’s just not enough to it to justify it. It says a lot that the best scares and most memorable scenes were all ones that could have come from any movie, not many that are unique to a road trip horror.