When in doubt, screenwriters Zachary Donohue and T.W. Burgess so awkwardly rush back to genre conventions that it feels like Passenger failing a series of trust falls before our eyes. There’s the violent and uninteresting cold open, where we see just what this titular hitchhiking ghoulie is capable of. There’s the seasoned old sage (Melissa Leo), straight out of Nomadland, who helps explain the haunting that gungho Tyler (Jacob Scipio) and skeptical Maddie (Lou Llobell) have attracted by stopping to help the victim of that cold open’s mysterious car crash. There’s the dusty tome of lore that one of the victims stumbles upon in a creaky old shop—here a tourist-trap book about the graffiti symbols that compose the “Hobo Code”—that provides them with the ammunition to fight back. Add a dollop of religion (Did you know Saint Christopher is the patron saint of travelers? You will after 95 minutes of this!), and you might as well have Ed and Lorraine Warren popping up in a post-credits scene, trying to roll a campervan into their room of haunted knickknacks.
Of course, for a certain kind of moviegoer, especially one with a more Scream-like enjoyment of horror movies that extends beyond the jump scares and monster designs, these explicit and boneheaded attempts to force square blocks into round holes can offer some good-bad chuckles. So too can the supernatural villain pursuing these two yuppie road warriors, who looks less like a demon and more like Gary Oldman’s greasy character in Slow Horses. That Øvredal makes him even a little intimidating is a testament to his visual sensibility, found most in an inspired sequence where the freaked-out couple uses a projector as a flashlight. Whipping the warped images of Roman Holiday around a dense copse in search of an ominous figure is as creative as using an arsenal of glitching dashcams is cheap—but Øvredal has the right sense of timing and light for both, making the most of the vehicular situations he’s handed.
He’s less confident with his cast, though Scipio and Llobell bug their eyes and scream their hearts out in their Patagonia chic. This is partially because he’s given far worse material; the relationship between Tyler and Maddie is perfunctory and their characterizations mercenary. Backstory crops up in conversation the literal scene before it needs to be used to justify the next silly plot maneuver, as twee and calculated as the Bob Ross bobblehead wobbling on their dash. And yet, Llobell’s wide-eyed, dead-serious intonation of “the Hobo Code” is so funny, it’s hard to be too mad at the earnest emptiness.
With much more in common with a misremembered ghost story than a contained car horror like Hallow Road, Passenger and its road trip of doom mainly have ironic pleasures on offer, like the tongue-in-cheek attractions peppering our crisscrossing interstates—or the “Burning Van” gathering that the characters attend. For a specific type of genre explorer, that’ll be enough to justify the journey. But as the crusty carfolk tell the glamping lookie-loos, the lifestyle isn’t for everyone.
Director: André Øvredal
Writer: Zachary Donohue, T.W. Burgess
Starring: Jacob Scipio, Lou Llobell, Melissa Leo
Release Date: May 22, 2026
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