Passenger Review

Passenger is a film that combines an American road movie with supernatural horror.

Tyler (Jacob Scipio) and Maddie (Lou Llobell) are a couple who move out of their Brooklyn apartment and travel America in a van. After witnessing a car accident in Tennessee, Maddie begins to see a scary figure she can’t escape. The couple need to find out what the spirit is and a way to stop it before it kills them.

Hokum and Obsession have set a high standard for horror cinema recently. Both were well-received, thematic films that have made healthy profits. Passenger aimed to be a big scare fest. It was a film that was jump-scare-heavy, with the Passenger appearing to terrify Maddie and Tyler. It was a simple meat-and-potatoes horror flick. The prologue was when the film was at its strongest because of the sense of panic and terror that Lucas (Miles Fowler) was experiencing as he was trying to escape the Passenger (Joseph Lopez).

The marketing of Passenger featured a statistic that 15,400 people who go on road trips go missing every year. It was similar to how The Strangers: Chapter 1 opened with a statistic about the number of violent crimes that happen annually in America. In Passenger’s case, it highlights how big America is and how easy it is to disappear in the nation. Passenger plays into a long tradition of road horror, from people being chased by a relentless psychopath, like in Duel and The Hitcher, to people stumbling onto a forgotten place filled with sinister people, such as The Hills Have Eyes and The Children of the Corn.

Passenger was essentially It Follows on a road trip. A couple get targeted by an entity that they can’t escape from, no matter how far they travel. It Follows-style narratives which have become more popular in recent years. Paramount had success with the Smile series, which was influenced by It Follows, and Whistle also it had characters being followed by spirits trying to kill them. All these films were about the chase and the victims trying to avoid the inevitable.

Passenger’s unique twist to this concept was incorporating elements of American travelling traditions. Hobo symbols played a big role in the story, which reminded me of The Simpsons episode “The Old Man and the Key.” Passenger was centred on American traveller culture, due to Maddie and Tyler meeting various people at traveller meet-ups, making the film feel inspired by the Oscar-winning film Nomadland. Van life was a source of conflict between the pair because Tyler enjoyed it, but Maddie struggled to adapt. The third act brought in religious ideas and themes that made Passenger seem as if it was produced by Angel Studios. As the film progressed, it became pulpier and sillier as Maddie and Tyler sought a way to beat The Passenger.

Passenger was a functional horror film that was inspired by many other sources. It was horror fast food compared to the fine dining experiences of Hokum and Obsession.