‘Passenger’ (2026)

Young couple Tyler (Jacob Scipio) and Maddie (Lou Llobell) set out on the road to pursue the lifestyle of living in their van. Travelling down a dark road one night they almost crash as another motorist Lucas (Miles Fowler) speeds past them and eventually crashes. An unseen force, known only as The Passenger, had plagued Lucas, that has now attached itself to Tyler and Maddie.

Having her doubts about van life, Llobell’s Maddie is initially presented as a character with some depth to her inner world, questioning whether the lifestyle is for her or if she’s only doing it to make Tyler happy. While ‘Passenger’ never quite explores that world, or anyone else’s, further it instead focuses on setting a slow and eerie mood, almost sluggishly creeping from one very dimly lit scene to another.

Heavy with atmosphere but not much else, director André Øvredal delivers a gloomy road trip that takes our main characters down a dark and windy road. Exploring a world where folklore and traveller mythology rule the paths Tyler and Maddie travel down, the film introduces simple concepts for drifters, delivering the exposition in an all too familiar and convenient way through a book easily located by Maddie.

Interesting though as some of the traveller rules and symbols may be to those entirely unfamiliar with rambler and roamer signs, the film telegraphs the information so blatantly that it becomes tiresome for any astute viewer of a film to pay attention, as all potential future incidents with The Passenger are heavily foreshadowed and the demonic entity becomes an easily quantifiable nuisance.

Further still, introducing some undisclosed abilities, namely the demon’s power to make its victims hallucinate or appear before them in the form of a known person, the film suffers too many familiar horror tropes. The lack of novelty significantly reduces any lasting impact the feature may have had on its viewers, rendering it forgettable.

Not to say that the film is completely unwatchable, but the few scares scattered along the way are increasingly frustrating as each subsequent fright jolts less and less, as the film wanders along and hits familiar jump scare tropes and fails to rouse thrills towards the anticlimactic finale.

Concluding on a victory for the survivors, Tyler and Maddie look on to the burning church where they have vanquished The Passenger, deciding to leave the road behind and get married and buy a house. Even though the story mostly follows Llobell’s Maddie as she finds it increasingly challenging to be on the road, the conclusion of the film leaves little to no choice for the pair as they make an obvious decision not to wander the road any more.

Unclear on what the message is, the film’s lack of a moral struggle leaves much to be desired regarding a psychological conflict that would go further in terms of the characters’ strife. With a lack of any moral qualms and personal development or growth, the end of Maddie and Tyler’s struggle falls a little flat, even though they have just conquered an unknowable evil beyond our mortal realm.

Somewhat lacklustre and overburdened with familiar horror clichés, ‘Passenger’ fails to rouse suspicion and suspense even as its unseen foe lurks stylishly in the shadows. With no effective surprises and going down a frustratingly familiar road, ‘Passenger’ is a miss when it comes to road trip or horror films.

Score: 1/4