Passenger (dir. André Øvredal)

by Jack Martin | May 24, 2026

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 94 mins

UK Distributor: Paramount Pictures

UK Release Date: 22 May 2026

WHO’S IN PASSENGER?

Jacob Scipio, Lou Llobell, Melissa Leo, Joseph Lopez, Miles Fowler, Alan Trong

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

André Øvredal (director), T.W. Burgess and Zachary Donohue (writers), Gary Dauberman and Walter Hamada (producers), Christopher Young (composer), Federico Verardi (cinematographer), Martin Bernfeld (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A young couple (Scipio and Llobell) are stalked by a mysterious presence during a road trip…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON PASSENGER?

Unlike most people, I wasn’t immediately sold on the trailer for director André Øvredal’s Passenger. It was admittedly an effective teaser – showing only a slightly condensed version of the film’s cold open and nothing more – but beyond that, the film just didn’t look any different to the countless other supernatural horrors out there.

And as it turns out, that’s exactly what Passenger is: just another one of those movies. It’s not an outright terrible movie, for it’s at the very least well-made with a couple of decently executed sequences, but anyone hoping that it will be as fresh or even as scary as that initial trailer made it out to be will probably find themselves going in circles.

That opening – and it’s not a spoiler because 1) it’s the first scene, and 2) it’s literally all in the trailer – sets the tone as a pair of nighttime travellers (Miles Fowler and Alan Tong) briefly stop on the road so one of them can relieve themselves, only for both to encounter a mysterious demonic entity that puts a swift end to their road trip. One smash-cut to the title later, we’re now with our actual lead characters: Maddie (Lou Llobell) and Tyler (Jacob Scipio), a young newly engaged couple who have decided to abandon their comfortable New York lifestyle and hit the open road in a makeshift camper van. However, a chance encounter with one of the opening scene’s survivors causes the same demon to attach itself to the couple via three mysterious diagonal lines on their van, allowing it to torment them with frightening visions and various jump-scares before possibly doing away with them.

There’s some thematic connection with the Smile movies – not least because they’re also distributed by Paramount, which itself is proving to be a demonic presence thanks to its depressingly imminent merger with Warner Bros – in that Passenger is also about an evil being who latches itself from one person to another and essentially messes with their heads because, well, they’re just a bellend. The Smile movies, though, had a better sense of structure and character, whereas Øvredal’s film often stalls in both areas as the script, credited to T.W. Burgess and Zachary Donohue, struggles to set an appropriate pace for itself, leading to elongated scenes in between the horror that undercut the overall impact of those big scares. As for the characters, while Maddie and Tyler are likeable enough for you to at least not root for their imminent deaths, they are pretty bland lead figures who don’t really have much about them that’s interesting, other than their often one-note romantic chemistry.

The film’s bigger issue is the fact that it’s honestly not that scary… at least, not as much as it thinks it is. Øvredal is a very talented horror filmmaker, as past films like The Autopsy of Jane Doe and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark have proven, and in fairness there are times in Passenger where he does put his keen sense for unsettling atmosphere to good use. A couple of notable standouts include a oner set in a car park that plays around with certain camera movements and even depth perception, and a later nighttime woodland sequence involving, of all things, Roman Holiday. But for every one of those inspired choices, there’s a good dozen more that are just a lot of stock horror tropes that you’ve seen before in a lot of other horror movies, from distorted close-ups of the demon to sudden bursts of (heavily CGI’d) violence that are just there for shock value. It’s mostly just a jump-scare movie, and not a particularly great one since it’s very easy to pinpoint when certain scares are going to suddenly leap out with that loud musical stinger accompanying them.

Another key issue is the demon itself, which already has a pretty uninteresting and not especially intimidating design, but more glaring is how doesn’t seem to have much consistency in what it can and can’t do whenever it pops up. It’s the kind of entity that can at first seem to appear and disappear at will, while occasionally getting into its victims’ heads and making them see or hear things that nobody else can (again, the Smile movies must have played some part in the overall influence on this script). But then, it’ll become apparent that it can somehow also distort time and space, not to mention kill people who it wasn’t even targeting in the first place, and also that coming into contact with anything related to St. Christopher – the patron saint of travellers, naturally – will actually harm it until it suddenly doesn’t, unless they’re on holy grounds in which case they can manifest as a being with mass rather than a disembodied spirit. It’s very confusing as to what the writers were aiming for when they were crafting together this villain, as it’s the kind of horror demon that can do just about anything yet show certain weaknesses only when it’s convenient to the plot, so you’re not so much scared by him as you are wondering how it all makes sense.

All of that, coupled with some inconsistent performances and a lack of cohesion in the storytelling, makes Passenger nothing more than a mediocre horror, one that certainly has its moments but overall isn’t as mind-blowing as the trailer might have been for some. Like a lot of long cross-country road trips, it’s likely that you’ll simply forget you even went on this particular journey, especially when there are so many other horror routes you could have taken instead – like Obsession, a movie that wipes every bit of its puke and piss with this film – that will at least give you something more memorable to store in your memory bank.

But hey, at least it has the self-awareness to close things out with Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” (albeit a cover version, but it still counts, goddammit!)

SO, TO SUM UP…

Passenger has a few effective scenes thanks to director André Øvredal’s often strong filmmaking, but it’s not enough to elevate the otherwise generic and inconsistent script above its sense of horror mediocrity.