Passenger Takes the Long Road to Dull Horror

Passenger

★ ★

Passenger is like a dish you see on the menu that makes your mouth water. Everything listed has you anticipating it more and more after you order it. It finally arrives and tastes bland. There’s nothing really wrong with the dish, it’s just underwhelming and lacking bold, delicious flavor. That sums up this horror film about a highway demon who latches onto weary travelers who stop by the side of lesser-traveled roads. You’ll know you’re marked. He leaves three scratch marks on your vehicle.

Tyler (Jacob Scipio) has convinced his girlfriend Maddie (Lou Llobell) that van life is the way to go for the foreseeable future. When we first meet them, they’re just finishing packing up their apartment and taking modest essentials into a new orange Mercedes-Benz cargo van they’ve rigged into a tiny home on wheels. This is the adventure Tyler’s been waiting for and Maddie seems all-in.

Lou Llobell as Maddie and Jacob Scipio as Tyler 2
© 2026 Paramount Pictures

They’re not traveling long before a speeding car with a gaping hole in the windshield pulls up beside them on a road less taken. The driver honks his horn and motions that he needs help. Maddie is the driver, taking over to let Tyler catch some shut-eye, and as she wakes him, the car speeds away.

Further down, the car has crashed on the side of the road, wrapped around a tree. Maddie and Tyler get out to help.

This is one of the rules of the road the film warns us about: If you’re traveling at night, don’t stop. Also, don’t travel at night. These rules seem to apply mostly to roads with light traffic. Tyler and Maddie don’t yet know these rules, and the film has yet to reveal them to the couple or to us.

Lou Llobell Maddie as and Melissa Leo as Diana
© 2026 Paramount Pictures

The driver is killed by the demonic entity, and Tyler and Maddie call the cops, give their statement and head on down the road.

The rest of the film is mostly a road trip gone wrong with one horrific scene after another as the entity ratchets up his attacks on the couple and we, the audience, are supposed to wonder how the heck they’re gonna beat this thing.

Like the dish metaphor, all the tantalizing ingredients are here. The couple is likable. The entity is formidable. The threats on the road are real, amplified by supernatural evil. There must have been a miscommunication in the kitchen, because, taken all together, it’s a barely passable film – bland as hell.

Lou Llobell as Maddie
© 2026 Paramount Pictures

Scipio and Llobell have good on-screen chemistry, but their characters lack emotional depth. Other than not wanting to see a happy couple die, or at the very least find themselves with serious road-trip PTSD, there’s not much about them to root for. The monster is formidable, but his talents seem underutilized, with his bag of tricks limited to jump scares and being barely visible in the shadows.

There is one scene that was creepy as hell. Tyler and Maddie set up a portable projection screen with a projector in a forest clearing. When the entity does his shadowy, scary business, the projector is used to shine light into the dark spaces between the trees. I’m sure the makers of Roman Holiday didn’t intend their movie to be used to shine light on forest demons, but it was an innovative use of light and imagery that gives the scene an amplified level of tension.

The van’s been marked
© 2026 Paramount Pictures

Passenger doesn’t do much for the horror genre, and I’m not sure it helps the cause when trying to convince a significant other to chuck it all and do van life. It’s the film you want to like but just can’t quite get there. As for me, I’ll stick to watching van-life movies in the theater as they come out. And if I ever get back to my car and find three scratch marks, I’m going back in to refill my Dr. Pepper.