By George & Josh Bate
“130 million people take road trips every year. 15,400 of them are never seen again.”
It’s quite an effective tagline for a horror movie (albeit one that doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny upon realizing that this amounts to 0.01% of people going missing on road trips) that has flown (or driven) decidedly under the radar. But André Øvredal’s Passenger makes for a surprisingly solid watch, one filled with exceptionally staged scares and destined to make your next road trip scarier than the last.
Passenger follows Maddie (Lou Llobell) and Tyler (Jacob Scipio), a couple who uproot their lives in Brooklyn to embark on a van life adventure across the country. While driving on an isolated road in the middle of the night, the couple pull over to help a driver who has just gotten into a car accident. Little do they know, at least initially, that by pulling over the couple have attracted the attention of a demonic stalker determined to taunt, haunt, and eventually kill them.
Cold opens are critical to horror movies, not only in unsettling viewers from the get-go but by establishing the kind of scares or disconcertment they are to expect from the proceeding film. John Carpenter’s Halloween and Wes Craven’s Scream feature among the most well regarded cold opens in horror history and demonstrate that nothing hooks an audience like a high-stakes, unbearably intense beginning. André Øvredal (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, The Autopsy of Jane Doe) does exactly that in Passenger. Although spoiled by promotional material, the cold open nonetheless proves remarkably effective at steadily creeping under your skin and slowly building tension. Such is the quality and standalone nature of this cold open that it could just as easily serve as a compelling horror short film as it does the beginning of a 90 minute feature.
A testament to the craftsmanship underlying the film’s array of palpably tense setpieces, Øvredal somehow doesn’t peak with the stellar cold open. Throughout the film, and throughout Tyler and Maddie’s doomed cross-country road trip, the director stages multiple lengthy frights that take their time building tension. Although not always punctuated by a particularly novel or effective scare, these setpieces feature some incredible camerawork and shot composition, with scenes taking place in a desolate parking lot and nighttime camp site serving as particular highlights. Backed by solid filmmaking, Øvredal excels in gradually escalating tension during these setpieces and capitalizing on the anticipatory anxiety that comes from waiting for a big scare to arrive.
Narratively, Passenger keeps it simple. The lore surrounding the demonic stalker known as The Passenger makes sense and doesn’t suffer from overcomplicated writing. Our two protagonists undergo fairly straightforward arcs, as Maddie questions whether a life on the road is really what she wants while Tyler thrives on the van life adventure. There’s all kinds of horror tropes squeezed in, from illogical character decisions to the seasoned expert who delivers vital warnings and exposition (in this case, played by Melissa Leo) to one character gaslighting the other and dismissing their claims that something is awry. And yet none of this familiarity significantly takes away from a horror film made under the watchful eye of a director who knows this genre inside and out.
Occasionally pulling one of the story, however, is stiff and unnatural acting from leads Jacob Scipio and Lou Llobell. The two are admittedly not afforded Shakespearean quality dialogue to deliver in the film, but they nonetheless fail to convincingly sell their characters’ relationship. Scipio in particular often overacts, while Llobell, for as great as she is in the more intense scenes, lacks the charm and emotion to make for a compelling protagonist. Together, the performances from Scipio and Llobell fail to match the quality of filmmaking on display and, at times, detract from immersion in an otherwise suspenseful film.
Passenger runs out of gas (pun intended) when arriving upon its conclusion. Øvredal leaves his poorest set-piece for the finale and, coupled with an overly abrupt and intrigue-devoid resolution to the story, concludes his film in mediocre fashion relative to its stellar start. More meat on the bones of its narrative and further development of the lore surrounding The Passenger may have imbued the film with a compelling mystery to accompany its horror, but, instead, the movie oversimplifies things and wraps up far too uneventfully. Hey, at least we get to hear “The Passenger” by Iggy Pop come the end the credits.
VERDICT: 7/10
Passenger finds director André Øvredal (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, The Autopsy of Jane Doe) craft a solid, albeit unremarkable, horror film worth watching for its exceptionally staged scares. After a superb cold open that could alone serve as a great horror short, the Norwegian filmmaker crafts a number of palpably tense and perfectly paced set-pieces, featuring clever shot composition and camera movement. While not always punctuated by a particularly novel or effective scare, these set-pieces, in particular ones taking place in a desolate parking lot and nighttime camp site, capitalize on the anticipatory anxiety that comes from waiting for a big scare to arrive. The narrative, meanwhile, benefits from avoiding convoluting storytelling, although a lack of further development regarding the lore of the demonic stalker sees the film play out with disappointingly little intrigue or mystery. Jacob Scipio and Lou Llobell deliver underwhelming performances as a couple whose road trip is derailed when The Passenger begins to stalk them and, at times, pull the audience out of the film with the stiffness and unnaturalism of their performances. While the film runs out of gas by the end and leaves its poorest set-piece for last, Passenger nonetheless surprises with how engaging of a horror movie it proves to be. This is a road trip worth taking.