PASSENGER. Sunken in our seats after the now usual set of car commercials that precede the previews, the trailer for Passenger was a welcome jolt. A likely pair of dudes pull over on a dark backroad for a potty break that escalates to creepy disappearance, sudden shock, gore, specter-sighting and a cracking jump scare. It boded well for this year’s early crop of summer horror, like an undead groundhog not seeing its shadow, signaling the end of the serious drama season.
While Passenger delivers on its promise of startling moments and roadside heebie-jeebies, the writing, story and performances are a drag on the fun and the goofy, self-aware energy of that tightly edited trailer, which serves as the opening of the movie, is lost.
After the initial supernatural roadside attack, the action shifts to New York City, where fresh-faced, young couple Maddie and Tyler (Lou Llobell and Jacob Scipio) are improbably moving out of a loft apartment with incredible light to embark on a van life adventure. Ditching most of their possessions, they head out armed with a St. Christopher charm and a Bob Ross bobblehead, Tyler barely containing his joy and Maddie mustering ambivalent smiles. Their divergent experiences of life on the road a month and change out are not helped by Tyler proposing and the happy-ish couple immediately witnessing the fallout of a grisly crash. The survivor of the earlier attack swerves past and crashes. When Maddie and Tyler pull over to help, the weirdness begins. According to road tips from a seasoned camper (Melissa Leo) at a van life meetup (unforgivably named Burning Van), they aren’t the first folks to be hunted by the Passenger demon. First, only Maggie experiences the growing unease, trippy moments and demonic stalking. But soon it’s clear to both of them that showering at 24-hour gyms isn’t the most cursed part of their adventure.
Director André Øverdall has some bone-rattling horror on his resume, including plot-light but compelling The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) and The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023), an excellent and unrelenting Dracula/Nosferatu side-quest about the vampire’s seafaring trip to England. Passenger shows flashes of what he can do with shadow, flashing emergency lights and, in one scene, a projector in the woods. But there’s little he can do to overcome the flimsy script by Zachary Donohue and T.W. Burgess. The dynamic between the couple is eye-rollingly uninteresting and made worse by a chemistry deficit between the leads. A conversation about their incompatible dreams, overdue as it is, becomes so tedious we grow impatient for the return of the evil entity. He, at least, knows what he wants. Leo, a pleasure to watch elsewhere, seems to have thrown up her hands and leaned into camp. Not that there’s anywhere else to go with lines like, “People don’t take trips — trips take people.”
The half-hearted connections to folklore, hobo code and Biblical tales don’t turn up the kind of dread the writers likely hoped for. In this economy, the prospect of paying for gas on an endless road trip is a greater terror. St. Christopher features prominently, and Passenger offers up an anecdote about him traveling with a man he discovers is a demon. But it’s nowhere as wild or haunting as the standard tale of him as the original reprobate who chose to roll with Satan before discovering the devil fears the more powerful Christ. There’s much in St. Christopher’s hagiography to mine for spooky lore, from his roots as a giant with a werewolf-like dog’s head and, after his conversion, his near drowning carrying a supernaturally heavy child (who turns out to be Christ) across a river. Then there’s his deflecting an arrow into a king’s eye and his eventual martyrdom by beheading. I mean, come on.
Looking back at the most effective scenes, one wonders if abandoning the folklore altogether wouldn’t be the best path, since the biggest scares are ordinary: a woman crossing a dark parking lot, lonely roads, the dark just beyond the flashlight’s beam. That’s where the most frightening parts are. R. 94M. BROADWAY.
HOKUM. Having seen this one late in its run, I mention it here as a salve to the disappointment of Passenger. Damian McCarthy’s weird and wily horror about a miserable writer’s (Adam Scott) trip to his deceased parents’ honeymoon spot in rural Ireland is a darkly comic treat with gut-clenching tension. The pleasure of an old-fashioned haunting, locked rooms, small-town kooks, superstition and hair-raising witch lore comes with nods to The Shining but more humanity than that film. Immersive visuals, physical effects and dreamy logic bind ancient fears to modern guilt. R. 107M. BROADWAY.
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the managing editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400 ext. 106 or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Bluesky and Instagram @JFumikoCahill.
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*Due to the holiday, updated listings were not available for Broadway Cinema. For showtimes, visit catheaters.com and minortheatre.com.
This article appears in In it for the Glory.
