Passenger | Official Trailer (2026 Movie) \u2013 Andr\u00e9 \u00d8vredal, Jacob Scipio, Lou Llobell<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nPOSITIVES<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having now seen Passenger, it’s easy to comprehend why the marketing team opted for more of a minimalized accessibility with its audience, in only depicting the film’s opening introduction, as that sequence is undeniably the high point of the film’s integrity, and one that sadly paints a false sense of security for the 80 minutes that follow it. It’s this section of the film that feels most fully realized with the capabilities of the supernatural antagonist, as well as the kind of accommodating atmosphere that Ovredal requires to evoke curiosity from an indulging audience, complete with single location slow panning photography and isolated emphasis that naturally breed vulnerability to the involved parties, leading to one of the few justifiable jump scares throughout the movie’s duration, leading to all of the attainable momentum directly into the opening screen crawl. If the rest of the film remained true to these simplistic-but-effective elements, then Passenger would’ve been harmless enough despite its mediocre meddling in storytelling, but unfortunately it’s the highest point of the movie’s artistic and impactful integrity, carving out limitless potential for a future filmmaker to dabble in a unique idea that naturally feels creepy in its approachable set-up. Beyond an opening half, Ovredal’s best aspects in direction stem from some of the atmospheric influences that materialize out of thin air whenever this passenger intrudes upon his prey, featuring meticulous deviation in the sight and sound of the candid depiction that help prolong what little tension he’s able to properly muster as a guiding hand. Visually, Ovredal and cinematographer Federico Verardi, craft a disorienting haze to the clarity of the contorted visuals, particularly in the depths of some immersive lighting flashes and subtle editing techniques, that play particularly well within the limitless trees and enveloping darkness that breeds so much unidentified motions in the distance of our centralized characters, but also some clever sound mixing in the atmospheric range that insinuates persistent presence in this unwavering outsider. It leads to very little in the face of effectively garnered scares, but it does prove a semblance of commendable effort that went towards making so many of the individual set pieces from a plaguing perspective, and considering a movie like this would’ve been most likely a found footage movie as recent as five years ago, it’s appreciated that Ovredal and the production invested themselves to flesh out the helplessness of his characters, especially alongside some meaningful performances from Jacob Scipio and Lou Llobell supplanting so much humanity and chemistry sparks to these tragically underwritten characters. While the script does each of them a grave disservice in increasing the stupidity of their enacted actions, Scipio and Llobell approach the material with a beckoning vulnerability factor and candid earnestness that grounds their characters in likeability of the most vital kind, even as proverbially repeated types to this overcrowded subgenre, and with each of them saying so much about the disconnection of their newfound surroundings, without the need for strained dialogue to illustrate, they share such a connectivity with the lens that constantly gives us a window to their tethered souls, bringing with them an abundance of dramatic energy and naturality that allows them to sink seamlessly into their respective roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NEGATIVES<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After an alluring introduction that surprisingly left me thirsty for more, Passenger sags all the more relentlessly with each passing minute of its familiarly contrived and atmospherically undercooked execution, leading not only to a disappointing 90 minutes of storytelling, with very little attainable frights in predictable outlining, but also a seven course meal of time-honored tropes assembled from previous films that keeps Ovredal’s film from finding a soul of its own within the proceedings. On the former, the film expectedly opts for an assortment of spontaneous jump scares whose telegraphed predictability lingers obviously once the sound design constantly reaches crippling levels of captivating silence, and despite two of these jump scares earning justifiable credibility in the ways they’re authentically conjured, the majority of them typically involve abrasively penetrating sound jolts to register any semblance of reaction from the audience, and considering it exploits this well bone dry throughout the proceedings, with very little atmospheric influence to preheat the oven before cooking the meat of the material, they land with the kind of uninfluential impact that lacks creativity and conciseness to its intended mark, settling for more of the same lazy and lackadaisical efforts that shows in spades to the movie’s overall execution. As for the script itself, when the exposition isn’t utilizing these hand-fisted exposition dump of deliveries for blandly written characters that lack insight into their backstories as late as the movie’s midway point, they’re enacting these assortments of reheated leftovers that articulate how interchangeable so many of these supernatural haunting movies are with one another, particularly those involving the cherished white woman savior with limitlessly impossible insight into the somewhat documented history of the passenger, the abundance of stupid character actions to further the contrived plotting of the movie’s illogical sequencing, and of course underdeveloped arcs of some of the more compelling aspects of the script’s opportunistic impulses, which leave them tediously overbearing in attempting to keep up with a movie whose sole intention feels geared to spark jolts to audiences with such a low bar of expectations for the horror movies that they seek out. On the latter, there’s a unique angling of van lifers that not only justifies the movie’s need to spend the entirety of its runtime on the road, but also an igniting spark of conflict into the discontent of our established duo, but it’s never approached with any kind of long-term commitment or profound layering in the lack of subtext of its shallowly surface level exploration, so it feels like an unnecessary opportunity of exploration that goes unfulfilling on account of its lack of relevance to the established plot, leaving Passenger incapable of utilizing socially relevant context that feels a lot more interesting than the same familiar roads that it frequently travels. Even in remaining truthful to the rules that it establishes itself for properly evading this nighttime navigator, the film simply can’t be bothered to abide to the same dynamics that it lays out for committed audiences, in turn making it difficult to follow along with what’s transpiring when the characters convey intention in one scene, then disregard it in the next by doing the exact opposite. There are many examples of these established rules throughout the film, but the two that are most hilarious to the script’s constant avoidance of them involve patrons never stopping, in order to avoid the passenger plaguing their parameters, and those who are plagued only traveling during the day, because I guess this already dead entity requires sleep like the rest of us. So immediately after conveying how vitally life-changing these rules are, our two protagonists of course travel at night during multiple scenes, without anything bad happening to them, and the idea of stopping is also humiliatingly evaded of a sequence involving the transfer of the passenger happening to a character who never stopped at an accident, nor had anything to do with the original haunting, so it’s made completely moot by its own executive actions. On the subject of the passenger, while his extending capabilities afford him an adaptive advantage that makes him difficult to shake in any circumstances, the make-up and prosthetics of his design aren’t anything remotely gruesome or influentially imposing, leaving him looking closer to Richard Brake than an undead navigator of the night meant to evoke chills in those he continuously comes across. To be fair, Joseph Lopez, the man rendering the demonic entity, does everything asked of him, particularly when he’s able to execute ferocious facial registries to the close proximity of the camera placement, but the blandness and lack of detail with his intended design leave plenty more to be desired in attaining a notoriety among fandom that places him amongst the most legendary killer designs of all-time, in turn obscuring the incarcerated humanity of Lopez’s performance, which in a better movie would balance terror and tragedy accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OVERALL
Passenger is four flat tires into familiar territory for the newest supernatural stalker subgenre addition, that ultimately and unfortunately goes nowhere fast, despite some stimulating techniques from Andre Ovredal injecting artistry to this otherwise jagged joy ride. After an enthralling opening introduction sequence that fires on all cylinders, the film plummets into an assortment of limitless cliches, lazy jump scares, and counterproductive measures that it unloads and disregards with total ignorance along the way, in turn cementing another soulless horror haunt for the proverbial pile of bargain bin deals available at your local Wal-Mart<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My Grade: 4.5 or D-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Directed By Andre Ovredal Starring – Lou Llobell, Jacob Scipio, Melissa Leo The Plot – After a young couple witnesses a gruesome highway accident, they soon realize they did not leave the crash scene alone, as a demonic presence called the Passenger (Joseph Lopez) won’t stop until it claims them both. Rated R for strong […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9682"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9684,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9682\/revisions\/9684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}