Passenger Review: What Happens When You Stop to Help Someone on a Dark Road — André Øvredal’s Best Film Yet

André Øvredal, best known for his work in The Autopsy of Jane Doe and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, takes Zachary Donohue (The Den) and newcomer T.W. Burgess’s The Hitcher-meets-Jeepers Creepers concept, and turns Passenger into a relentless 90-minute ride. Right from the start, Øvredal doesn’t waste time getting down to business with a pre-title credit sequence, detailing two friends (one of them played by Miles Fowler) driving on a quiet back road late at night before they subsequently encounter a mysterious figure.

What follows is an ominous moment that keeps intensifying to a breaking point, coupled with Øvredal’s hard-hitting approach in jump scares. The tense opening stretch effectively gives us a taste of what to expect for the rest of the movie. Øvredal uses a lot of jump scares here, which may come across as a typical cheap gimmick. Fortunately, this is one of those horror movies where the director knows well how to utilize the otherwise overused scare tactic to one’s advantage.

Now, as the story proper gets underway, we follow a young couple – Tyler (Bad Boys: Ride or Die’s Jacob Scipio) and Maddie (Lou Llobell) – as they leave New York City to embrace van life, turning their vehicle into a mobile home. They manage to adapt to their new lifestyle as weeks pass by, and everything seems to be going well throughout their cross-country road journey until they stumble upon a car accident on a back road one night. Acting as Good Samaritans, they do what they have to by calling 911, only to end up making the biggest mistake of their lives: They shouldn’t have stopped in the first place. But how would they know?

Even after Maddie meets a fellow vanlifer named Diana (Melissa Leo) at one point during a gathering, where the latter knows a lot about the do-and-don’t rules of the highway, it looks like the unholy curse of the titular passenger is forever latched onto this couple. Poor Tyler and Maddie, whose newly adjusted life has turned upside down. The story is ultimately about the wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time scenario, leading to the unfortunate couple’s seemingly endless nightmare of facing the entity.

Øvredal draws great performances from Scipio and Llobell, where the latter two share a genuine on-screen dynamic and chemistry, more than enough to make us root for their terrifying ordeal throughout the movie. It isn’t just about the couple desperately trying to stay alive, as the passenger keeps coming back to haunt them. The story also addresses the ups and downs of their relationship, particularly from Maddie’s perspective, whose decision to let go of her stable life in favor of living on the road with Tyler somehow made her rethink the long-term sustainability. This relatable problem adds a grounded realism to their flawed characters rather than restricting them to one-dimensional stereotypes that typically dominate the horror film genre.

As for the titular antagonist played by Joseph Lopez, Øvredal eschews the exposition-heavy backstory for a minimalist, what-you-need-to-know basis, which helps to establish the demonic passenger equivalent to a palpable fear of the unknown. A living hell that cannot be reasoned with or bargained with. Øvredal elevates the passenger’s scary appearance by making good use of the interminable road, the isolated setting, and the darkness of the night to evoke a consistent sense of atmospheric dread, while mirroring the look and feel of what it’s like to be stuck in the recurring harrowing cycle that Tyler and Maddie can’t get away from, no matter how hard they try.

Credit also goes to Øvredal and cinematographer Federico Verardi for using camerawork as a psychological tool to build escalating tension and suspense. Take the parking lot scene, for instance, as the camera tracks and circles around the increasingly anxious Maddie, giving the heightened illusion of claustrophobia even in an open-space setting, showcasing Øvredal’s flair for engrossing set pieces. And I’m glad the movie’s predominantly nighttime setting doesn’t suffer from dim or murky lighting, allowing us to see what’s going on in the dark.

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