Passengers(2026)(Review) - Gruesome Gazette

Norwegian director André Øvredal has had a bit of an uneven film-making career thus far. He broke out with crowd pleasing favorites such as ‘The Autopsy of Jane Doe’, and ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’, but his big budget attempt at telling a Dracula story with ‘Last Voyage of the Demeter’ was a box-office flop that interrupted his trajectory in quite an impactful way. So, after some time, he’s back with another new entry in ‘Passenger.’

‘Passenger’ tells the story of Maddie and Tyler, a couple who are leaving behind their average lives to pursue a brand-new venture with van life – by traveling the country and living out of a souped-up vehicle. They’re both excited to start this chapter of the life, but after a couple of weeks they encounter a single-vehicle car wreck. They pull over to offer assistance and call for help, when they not only see the driver is completely torn apart, but there’s also three distinct claw marks on the back of the car. And after encountering this, Maddie begins to notice a strange apparition that appears to be following them.

In a way, this is a haunted-house film that takes place entirely on the open road. In my Letterboxd review I called it “The Conjuring meets Jeepers Creepers, but with a far less interesting monster.” So, allow me to break this down a bit for you. The apparition/creature that’s pursuing them is not only shown on full display early into the film, but we see them A LOT throughout the run time. Most monster movies are effective when the monster is revealed slowly over time, giving us a gradual build up to a scary reveal – but by showing us this creature early on, we have too much time to scrutinize and become numb to its scariness. On top of this, the couple we spend the entire film with is neither interesting nor fun to watch. So when we are stuck between boring protagonists and a lackluster antagonist, all that’s really left is the story itself, the atmosphere/tension, and the direction.

To its credit, the film is successful in those regards. The story and lore of the actual haunting is very interesting and effectively creepy. The atmosphere and tension is very dark and gripping, offering a lot of interesting set pieces and a lot of jump scares (although, I strongly believe there are TOO many of them.) And Øvredal’s direction is very well done to tell the story on display. So the film does have its merits among the things I felt weren’t effective.

So, if I were to summarize all of that, I’d say that it’s a tense and interesting premise, that’s held back by its uninteresting characters (both human and non) and overuse of predictable jump scares.

It’s not a bad film by any means, but it’s definitely a forgettable one.

2/5

“Passenger” is currently playing in theaters.

‘Til Next Time,
Mike Cleopatra