If you scroll social media for a bit, you’re bound to run across the van-life cult. Hordes of beautiful people advertise their perfect lives on the road across the Internet. What they often don’t show are the less-glamorous parts of van life: showering at 24-hour gyms, being harassed by neighborhood watch, or in the case of the film “Passenger,” being haunted by a demonic entity. “Passenger” is a horror film that has a really neat concept — there is a demon that makes you get into a car accident, and the next person that encounters the accident will be haunted until they reach the same fate. It’s a bit like “It Follows,” but with a vehicular spin. However, what begins as a gripping premise suffers from inconsistent mechanics, over-reliance on jump scares, and a flimsy plot.
“Passenger” has a phenomenal opening. The movie opens with two guys driving on a forest road exchanging banter. As one gets out to relieve himself, the other abruptly disappears with little noise. This sequence builds suspense through eerie silence as the lone man investigates his friend’s disappearance. Suddenly, the missing friend flies through the windshield, bloodied and battered. Horrified, the surviving friend drives away, until he sees a mysterious man in clerical attire on the side of the road, over and over again. Then, in a well-earned jump scare, the demon in priest’s clothes is in the passenger’s seat and the title card fades in. This is likely the best sequence in the whole movie. With a simple premise and masterful suspense, it could be a successful short story. However, with 90 minutes of run-time, it feels like there isn’t enough meat on the bones to warrant a feature-length film from this setup.
A Road Trip with a Twist
After the intro sequence, we meet the film’s two protagonists: Tyler (Jacob Scipio) and Maddie (Lou Llobell). The couple are moving out of the city and hitting the road as they plan on living out of their van and exploring what the nomadic life has to offer. After six weeks on the road, Tyler and Maddie get engaged in their van. Tyler says that if they can survive six weeks on the road, they can survive much more together. However, they would soon find out if that was truly the case. That evening, the two encounter a man driving erratically and then find his car in a wreck off the road. As they investigate the crash, Maddie sees several mysterious and alarming things: visions of something hurting the driver, a strange man in clerical attire lurking in the distance, and a marking on their van that matches a marking on the crashed car. By stopping, they had been marked by The Passenger (Joseph Lopez), and he wouldn’t let them stay on the roads for much longer.
Tyler and Maddie are interesting characters, but their writing often fall into common horror archetypes. Maddie is the suspicious one that is haunted by visions of the demonic stalker. Meanwhile, Tyler is the one that wants to be supportive. However, he doesn’t see anything or necessarily believe her until the third act. However, their dynamics bring an interesting angle to the horror film. Tyler is naively optimistic, happy with the van-life and content to travel perpetually. Maddie, on the other hand, considers her long-term security and comfort with such a difficult lifestyle decision. She feels it is a worthwhile journey, but expresses how she wants to settle down and stand still. With this dynamic in play, the horror elements parallel her fears of commitment and instability in the face of their engagement.
An Overreliance on Clichés
Unfortunately, the film often relies on cliché horror tropes that quickly become tired and predictable. The primary device for frights is jump scares. Instead of subversive storytelling, most of the suspense and tension simply build toward a loud close-up demon-face startle. It becomes predictable and tired fast. There are several moments where it feels like the characters go against their better judgment simply so the film can place them in another suspenseful situation in order to deliver another jump scare. Additionally, the mechanics of the haunting feel inconsistent and contrived. The demon seems to kill others instantly, but Maddie and Tyler are granted countless chances. The plot armor deflates the stakes as well. It makes The Passenger seem less dangerous and more like a limited plot device.
Despite the laziness in some scares, there are some creatively tense situations. There is one moment where Maddie and Tyler are camping in the woods watching “Roman Holiday” on a projector and they end up using the projector in the woods as a light to look for The Passenger. This leads to an eerie effect of black and white faces projected against an eerie forest, searching for something behind the images. It was truly creative and effective, but moments like these are cheapened by an over-reliance on jump scares. The movie is effective at delivering some frights in a unique setting. But unfortunately, it falls into the same pitfalls that many other horror films do. It fails to do anything especially memorable or innovative with the promising premise and the van-life setting.
“Passenger” is currently in theaters.
