By I don’t know what’s scarier in this movie: being subjected to van life or an entity haunting the main couple. PASSENGER, directed by André Øvredal, follows the freshly engaged Maddie (Lou Llobell) and Tyler (Jacob Scipio) as they uproot their city life to travel the world in a van. On the surface, it’s a romantic escape, but Tyler frames the journey almost like a test of their love. If they can survive six weeks on the road together, their relationship can survive anything. He even proposes on the first night, turning what should be a celebration into something that already feels like an added pressure.
Before we even properly meet the couple, the film opens with a sequence that immediately sinks your stomach. Two friends are driving down a dark highway when one of them stops to pee, an ordinary moment that slowly pivots into something deeply wrong. The scene is patient and atmospheric, letting tension build until the horror finally arrives in unavoidable detail that viewers can’t take their eyes off of. Unfortunately, after only the first five minutes, the film never quite reaches this level of impact again. After that encounter, Maddie and Tyler find themselves connected to the same presence that plagued these men, which Maddie quickly discovers is an entity known as the Passenger. What should be the beginning of their shared adventure quickly destabilizes, as fear follows them onto the road and into their new life together.
Soon after, they notice a strange mark on their van: three deep gashes that Maddie can’t stop fixating on, even after repairs. The damage feels less like coincidence and more like a warning they don’t yet understand. Their search for answers leads them to a local shop where Maddie discovers a haunted travel book, filled with accounts from other travelers who seem to understand the hidden symbolism behind this lifestyle and the entity attached to it. It’s here the film leans into its mythology, though not with anything very gripping. What follows is an uneven attempt at horror that keeps falling flat. The film relies heavily on jump scares and a disorienting atmosphere that never fully turns into something truly unsettling. The style is there, but the fear never gives itself room to land.
The idea of a menacing force that refuses to leave no matter how far you run is inherently unnerving, yet the Passenger is ultimately reduced to something closer to a slasher villain than the looming threat it hints at being. He’s a real bore. The scares are too eager, rushing toward the payoff without building, instead prioritizing moments that should look cool, but since they’re not scary, fail twofold. That said, there are moments where the film’s visual elements pay off. Religious imagery is scattered throughout in standout shots, particularly through statues and symbolic framing; there’s also an inventive use of projection—with old film imagery cast onto trees—that briefly transforms the woods into a new threat itself.
The performances struggle to carry any emotional weight, fear or otherwise. Lou Llobell has a few gripping moments, particularly in a parking lot scene where Maddie’s fear bubbles over, but the relationship between her and Tyler is never convincing. Their dynamic is underexplored, and so is Maddie’s background, leaving Tyler to have more chemistry with the van than with his own fiancée. These stiff performances make it difficult to invest in either character, and while the film points towards larger questions about commitment, sacrifice, and the realities of building a life including someone else’s dream, it never explores them deeply enough for those stakes to matter for the audience.
What starts as a strong concept misses an opportunity to explore the realities surrounding van life. The road is filled with people who have spent years navigating it, yet the film rarely, let alone meaningfully, taps into that lived experience. Instead of expanding its scope more deeply through the people Maddie and Tyler encounter, PASSENGER narrows; potential allies keep abandoning them, throttling the story’s momentum. This missed opportunity is especially noticeable because it’s not as though there aren’t fears associated with living on the road. Roaming couples are not only facing danger, claustrophobia, and isolation, but the same romantic strains that Maddie and Tyler are facing. Tyler particularly embodies this tension as someone pursuing his dream, while Maddie is left to adapt to it. The film plays into this: Maddie is experiencing the paranormal effects more than her partner is. However, Øvredal misses the opportunity to play into a more psychological element, and thus misses the opportunity to raise any stakes. PASSENGER is a film with a strong atmosphere and intriguing visual ideas that never come together. Its opening promises something much more terrifying than what follows, leaving a feeling that the film was in over its head the very same way that its protagonists were.
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