THE STORY – A few weeks into their van life adventure, a young couple witnesses a horrific accident that leaves the driver dead. Soon they’re being pursued by a demonic stalker who’s impossible to outrun and follows them wherever they go.
THE CAST – Jacob Scipio, Lou Llobell, Melissa Leo, Joseph Lopez, Miles Fowler & Alan Trong
THE TEAM – André Øvredal (Director), T.W. Burgess & Zachary Donohue (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 94 Minutes
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A driver on a long, dark road thinks they see a figure on the side of the road. They don’t stop. Some ways down the road, they see the figure again – a hitchhiker, perhaps, or someone who just had an accident – and then again, and again, until they realize the figure is haunting them, and they cannot escape whatever it has in store for them. Versions of this oft-told tale have been shared around campfires and at children’s sleepovers for decades. It’s been adapted to stage and screen numerous times in different forms, perhaps most famously as the Lucille Fletcher radio play “The Hitchhiker,” originally written for Orson Welles and later adapted by Rod Serling as an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” It’s a chilling story, but usually one that’s tinged with melancholy. “Passenger,” the latest addition to the Hitchhiker cinematic universe, chooses to ignore the melancholy in favor of horror thrills, to its detriment. Despite André Øvredal’s strong direction, by the time we arrive at the generic third-act supernatural showdown, it’s clear that the filmmakers never knew exactly what they wanted to say.
“Passenger” updates the old story to the 21st Century, following a couple starting their #VanLife journey whose lives are turned upside down by a supernatural presence after they stop to help at a car crash site late at night. The film’s opening scene (spoiled by its use in the trailer), featuring two bros on a road trip, sets the stage perfectly, leading with the film’s standout use of sound, light, and 360-degree tracking shots to build tension in a monstrously effective little short-film opener. After that, we’re introduced to Maddie (Lou Llobell) and Tyler (Jacob Scipio) as they leave their Brooklyn apartment behind to live on the open road. Six months later, van life is clearly starting to wear on Maddie, but Tyler has taken to it like a duck to water. He even proposes to Maddie in their van. However, not long after she says yes, they’re surprised on the road by the car from the opening scene, and later find it crashed into a tree. They stop to help the driver, but in addition to three nasty-looking claw marks on the car, Maddie sees a figure in the distance. The same figure we saw in the opening scene. What is this mysterious presence? Can Maddie and Tyler find a way to stop its relentless pursuit of them?
“Passenger” would stall out without an endearing pair of leads, and thankfully, Llobell and Scipio have the spark the film needs to keep going. Whenever the film threatens to get crushed under the weight of its own half-baked ideas, the two of them will bring the tiniest nothing of a character moment roaring to life with their strong chemistry and easygoing charm. T.W. Burgess and Zachary Donohue’s screenplay does an admirable job of letting the exposition unfold naturally, so the actors have to fill in many blanks with their facial expressions and body language. Llobell and Scipio give such good performances that you feel connected to their characters long before we eventually get the exposition dump of why they’re even on the road in the first place.
That’s good, because the screenplay goes out of its way to present Maddie and Tyler as relatively capable and ready for van life, where most other films would present them as a couple of out-of-place yuppies who fucked around and found out. Maddie may not enjoy life on the road, but she’s not naïve, and neither she nor Tyler cares more about posting photos on social media than actually living their lives on the road. There’s no reason for anything bad to happen to them, which makes the horror all the more gut-wrenching. Unfortunately, two scenes set at big van-life meetups feel like they were untouched by earlier drafts, in which the protagonists were more stereotypically “deserving” of their traumatic ordeal. Featuring Oscar winner Melissa Leo, apparently auditioning for a “Nomadland” sequel, these scenes feel tonally off from the rest of the film, even setting up rules in one just to break them in the other.
Not that logic matters much in supernatural horror. Thankfully, Øvredal knows how to bring the best out of the scariest scenes and stages several bangers. He makes fantastic use of light and shadow whenever the titular spirit appears onscreen; one scene involving a projector in the woods is a diabolical delight. A later one-take wonder (referencing one of the most famous scenes in horror history, from 1942’s “Cat People”) makes effective use of perspective to build tension, as the camera follows Maddie as she walks across a parking lot to the van, swings around her to look as footsteps start approaching from behind, and swings back to reveal that the van is not where it should be. The constant use of long takes to build tension works like a charm, and even though it gets repetitive, it somehow adds to the fun, ginning you up for the anticipation of when and how the passenger will make its presence known.
While Øvredal’s direction and the lead performances carry the film through any rough patches, it can get quite rough. Burgess and Donohue have plenty of great ideas, but don’t seem to have edited any of them, resulting in a story that can be frustrating. The folk horror elements never really cohere, and the religious overtones brought into the story early on (Tyler hangs a St. Christopher medallion in the van, believing it will help guide them; Maddie preferes to believe in their GPS) don’t grow into anything other than a setting for the final showdown, which is as generic a supernatural horror final showdown as you can imagine, abandoning all the fun sound and camerawork that elevated the rest of the film. Even the ultimate message that comes from Maddie and Tyler’s character arcs feels like too little, too late. As a thrill ride, though, it’s incredibly effective; the passenger himself is terrifically creepy, and Øvredal directs the set pieces with verve. “Passenger” is a very smartly-made film, precision-engineered to get a rise out of an audience, but it’s a poorly conceived one, showing the limits of how much good direction can save a stranded screenplay.
