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Sitting down to clear my watch list on a Tuesday night, I put on Passenger expecting a scary road trip nightmare but instead I got dropped straight back into the early two thousands and Im going to explain this but it wasnt a pleasant memory. The movie opens with its own short movie before you start asking like who the F is the Passenger? anyone getting posses who is going to feel like a passenger?, but its just two guys who pull off on a dark road so one can take a leak and he comes back to find the doors wide open and the horn blasting, real tension the trailers already spoiled, the kind of movie that drops the good stuff on the trailer baiscally. After that intro the movie shifts to our main couple, Tyler and Maddie, handing over the keys to their Brooklyn apartment to live in a customized van. I liked the van life angle trapping them in a mobile haunted house, and once they jump six weeks into winter Maddie is already having second thoughts about giving up a warm home. The transition from that opening kill to the couple feels disconnected though, like two different scripts forced together and the movie burns so much time on their relationship drama that the tension is gone real quick. You are waiting for the horror to kick in while they argue about their lifestyle choices, and by the time the highway accident finally happens, I was tempted mutliple times to press that fast forward button. Their chemistry feels flat, like they are acting in two separate rooms, making it hard to care when they realize they did not leave that crash site alone. The entity is called the passenger and once it latches onto them the movie turns into a barrage of cheap jump scares that just end up annoying, I have never been a fan of those demons that can go with you across places like its just your shadow and the person been hunted feels just fine, its different when they are possess and have no control overthemselve. I really jump into this one without much expectations and I was so wrong to think it would be some sort of psychological horror but instead it becomes a shiny early two thousands mess leaning on loud noises. My first impression was a total letdown, since I wanted to love this concept but watching them make stupid choices right out of the gate left me frustrated.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33763941/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
Even though the movie is mostly a letdown, there are a few moments of visual horror that are actually damn good and show what this director can do when he is not relying on cheap tricks. The scene that actually stands out is the gym parking lot, where Maddie walks out into the dark after a workout and keeps looking back over her shoulder, only to find their van is somehow physically moving farther away every time she turns around, its a big wtf moment specially when the lights start to go out, its literally like something is hunting her down but they really kill the mood with the fake steps. It builds a dope sense of paranoia, playing on that fear of walking to your car alone in the dark on an empty parking lot at night, in my mind is not that you will encounter some sort of demon but someone is going to jump you. They also pull off a creative scare inside the van using a portable movie projector as a makeshift flashlight, the beam projecting a scene from Roman Holiday onto the walls and creating fake faces that hide the actual demon lurking in the shadows, again the demon that travels along with you but this time I would say was just fine. Seeing the entity poke its face through that projected image is a probably the most legit unsettling scene the movie has. Another one that got me is when Tyler and Maddie drive the van through a dark field covered in bodies wrapped in sheets, camera locked in tight while they roll over them and you can actually hear the skulls crunching under the tires, this after Tyler already tried to tell Maddie it was just some psychological illusion. I really like the camera work during this shots, they use these smooth circular panning shots that really make you feel boxed in inside that small space. Credit also goes to the entity design once you get a clear look at it, wearing a creepy old preacher getup with a face that looks like Rumplestiltskin from Once Upon a Time. The sound effects in the quiet moments work very well too, like the brake lights flashing on and off in the dark woods while you sit in silence waiting for something to step into that red glow, so if the movie had kept that same creativity going, it would have been way better or at least a descent watch, but these dope moments are scattered too thin to save it.
The fatal flaw of Passenger is how it constantly undercuts its own tension with type of cuts or audio, you going to feel like you constantly spining everytime someone got scared, leaning way too hard on fake out audio cuts instead of actual horror and that circular paning that looks cool sometimes. There is a scene where Tyler is outside repairing the van and Maddie stares into the dark forest, the movie building a thick quiet atmosphere that you can feel something is going to go down, only to hit you with a deafening sound cut of him dropping a metal bolt on the ground. It almost feel like someone missing a goal, you alone and there is no goal keeper and the director leans on it constantly. The writing also falls flat when they reach an RV camp and meet an older woman named Diana, who exists only to explain the story behind the three slash marks on their van, even though Tyler and Maddie already get a sense of whats up with this people. It gets tire real quick and it gets worse when the whole camp locks down the second the Passenger shows up, only for Diana to get killed right after agreeing to guide them to the church. The logic of the haunting makes zero sense either, teleporting and ripping people apart in the first encounter, then slowly stalking Tyler and Maddie and opening their car doors one by one. The movie also wrecks its climax with an unfunny running gag, the van horn blasting a theme song I can remember right now, as they arrive at the final showdown church. The ending is a mess of ultra mega convenient plot, since Tyler casually mentions he hit an S.O.S. button on the dashboard at some point, which is apparently why a fleet of emergency vehicles roll up to a random church in the Arizona desert. It feels like the writers had no idea how to defeat the road demon, so Maddie just rams it into a Saint Christopher statue to impale it and the building and their van conveniently burn down. The one part it does get right is paying off the Saint Christopher setup, since the holy ground weakens the thing before Maddie finishes it off, though the random rescue call after still makes the resolution feel unsatisfying.
This movie have a bunch of horror scenes or ideas if you will from many other movies, at some point it even make me thing of From where you fall into this loops like right at the start with the guy on the road, but it fumbles the execution so badly because who in their right mind is going to see the same guy twice, to your right, at the side of the road and you are going to keep going on the same direction? dont you stop or turn around?. The whole idea of some relentless entity that marks you after one event and just slowly walks toward you forever also reminds me of It Follows (2014), but Passenger does not have the creeping dread, I kept thinking of multiple other movies and tv series as they kept showing you every trick the movie got. Instead of sticking with that indie thriller tone, the director swings hard into an early two thousands slasher look and it had me thinking of movies like Halloween and even the worse sequels from the Final Destination movies. There is a whole sequence where the characters try to figure out the rules of their curse to avoid death, playing out like those late night teen horror movies where death is stalking them by design, but here it just comes off feeling silly and a cheat code, at the same time the core of an entity latching into them for just stopping at a highway accident. The problem with mashing all these subgenres together is the movie never figures out or builds up its own identity, it just bounces between a van life expirience and some loud jump scare fest, I know I rant quite a bit on this one but at first you going to like some of the tricks and scares the movie pulls on you but then they just get old. The camera work, the angles, the dark scenes and some of the effects shows they had the visual quality to make something good, they probably had all the tools but the script and director fail the movie, a good director can take an average script and make a worth watching movie, most people are better just skipping it.
I am not going to pretend Passenger is anything more than a well made misfire that wastes a dope concept and I am glad I decided to watch this at my sister bd to kill some time while all the woman were talking, it was just me on my tablet, kids playing on ther steamdeck so I had to kill some time. The final moments try so hard to feel emotional and uplifting but it is so cheesy it wipes out whatever cool scares the movie put out on the earlier scary scenes. After their van and the church burn down, Tyler tells Maddie they lost everything but she smiles and reveals she saved the engagement ring, while Tyler assumes for a second she means his goofy Bob Ross bobblehead instead, easily one of the most cringe inducing wrap ups I have witnessed. They also wreck the internal logic of the threat at the finish line, the entity suddenly using telekinetic force to rip the Saint Christopher medallions out of the van ceiling, but why the hell it did not just do that hours earlier. It is frustrating watching a movie build up monster rules, like Tyler guessing it only comes out after dark, I was like omg where is the manual for this movie, honestly thats why even when Evil Dead Rise came out, it didnt follow the same exact logic to the first one so thats why it was not that popular, cant bend the horro movie rules just like that. The cinematography and moments like the gym parking lot chase prove real talent, but a few cool shots cannot rescue a script full of fake out audio cuts and weak dialogue. I wanted to be hooked by the claustrophobic nightmare of living in a van while being hunted down but the pacing killed that. I am giving this movie a generous 6/10, mostly out of respect for the projector tricks and some of the cool unsettling scenes, but the rest of the movie is just is not worth the effort, you better just watching the best clips all together. Honestly kip this one entirely, save yourself about an hour and a half of your time, Im not saying Im 100% frustrated but it just didnt work as expected, it just didnt even respects the rules it sets up for its own.
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Rating: 60/100
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