Passenger | Movie Review

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]So, horror movie fans, we have been eating good this month. We got Hokum, we got Obsession, and now we have a brand new one to talk about today called Passenger. Is this a thrill ride you should rush out and see, or is this one of the times you should wait at home and just DoorDash it?

[00:00:18]So, Passenger directed by André Øvredal, and he is the director who brought to us The Autopsy of Jane Doe. And in this movie, it follows a young couple set to get married, and they are living life to the fullest. They're traveling around the country in a van because they're hippies. Can you blame them? You ever work a job? Don't judge these guys. But anyways, life is going great until one night they stumble upon a fatal car crash, and then a passenger latches onto them. But this is no passenger princess, baby. It's an evil entity. At least I think it is because the movie never fully explores that or anything, and that's one of the dozen issues I'm going to get into. See, when I walked out of the theater here, I already made a judgment call. I'm not going to talk about this movie and call it Passenger.

[00:00:54]I'm going to call this movie Assenger.

[00:00:56]Thank you. I'll be here all week. Not my best work, but I do what I can. We've been eating too good, guys, okay? We had Obsession last week. You guys know I was obsessed with that movie. I made three videos on it. And that was the standard in my eyes. I was like, yes, that No, it's not the standard, okay? It's not the standard. Every time you think you're winning too much, life serves you a big slice of humble pie, a big slice of Passenger. Eat Passenger. This movie was [ __ ] terrible. Guaranteed lock to be bottom 10 of the year. One of the worst horror movies I have seen in years. It's a masterclass in how to make a terrible horror film. I didn't know anything about this movie going into it.

[00:01:31]I just saw that teaser trailer that probably hyped a lot of you guys up going around last week. I was going to see Obsession, I think it was, so yeah, a week ago. They showed that teaser trailer. I thought it was awesome. It was creepy. I was giddy. I'm like, we have another horror film. My soul left my body. It was so good. I'm like, yes.

[00:01:48]What's Passenger? I've never heard of it. [ __ ] it. I'll be there next week.

[00:01:51]And yeah, I was there next week, and it felt like I was there a week. This movie was awful. I guess it was a red flag looking back that they just directly ripped two minutes from the movie as the trailer. They didn't even make a trailer cuz there's really nothing to make a trailer on. So, yeah, I'll just put that in the mental bank going forward if a movie ever does that, it's probably not a good thing even if it felt like a good thing at the time. Hey, we all live and learn. The other thing is if you follow this channel, you'll know I'm a huge fan of The Autopsy of Jane Doe, one of the most underrated, creepy, scary films ever nobody talks about. So, the fact that this guy is the director, it's like an Invasion of the Body Snatchers incident. Like, there's no possible way that that guy is talented as he was to make that movie made this movie. I refuse to believe it. Whenever I stumble upon that, it's like personally insulting. I was duped. What are you doing? And it's a crazy movie to talk about because if you talk to an alien and you had them come down to Earth and you showed them a horror film, you might be able to convince them this is a pretty decent one because it has a lot of elements that would make a horror movie good. It's got a villain, it's got a creepy concept, it's got some effective setups and scares at least it attempts. So, if you've never seen a horror movie before, you might watch a movie like this and go, "Oh, I see the vision. That movie was pretty good." But even though the movie has all of the ingredients of a good movie, it's like you gave the recipe to the rat from Ratatouille and then he burnt the [ __ ] house down because whatever this was was an absolute catastrophe. So, we'll start off with what I like because there's not a whole lot here. We're going to get that out of the way. Then in a couple of the minutes I'll go on one of my infamous rants about why this movie is doo-doo. But this is a strange case because I think the only people going to see this movie are people like me who watch horror movies specifically, not really mainstream audiences. They probably won't even know this movie exists. But ironically, all of the best parts of this movie are like the meet-cute rom-com stuff related to the couple, none of the horror elements. So, it's just weird because you'd think this movie would be for horror fans, but all of the best parts of it feel like they're ripped off of Lifetime. And the only other positive I can give this movie, that's how you know it's a short list of positives, is that opening scene. It's the cold open of this movie.

[00:03:45]It's the direct scene you've seen from that teaser trailer. It's cool. It's effective. It's creepy. It sets up the tone for what this movie should and could have been. Is it? No. But, it had all of the ingredients there. So, again, this is a giant ball of potential or giant meteor that crashed and burned.

[00:04:00]And we could do this raffle style. I could just talk about all the garbage this movie is, but we'll start off with, I don't know, the most important part of a horror film. Is it creepy? Is it effective? Well, no. This is a master class in how to formulaically make a horror film that has no punch to it.

[00:04:16]This is a movie that has 15-20 jump scares in it. I didn't flinch. I mean, I could have watched this movie with an apple on my head while a leopard kind is trying to shoot the apple off my head with a bow and arrow, and I still wouldn't have flinched watching this movie. So, I don't know how they managed to do it again. An absolute master class in how to make a terrible film. The movie's also 80 minutes long, feels like 8 hours. This is a movie that is incredibly boring. There's no plot going on here. You don't really care about the characters. A lot of exposition, a lot of again meet-cute dialogue between these guys, which is oddly the best part of the movie cuz it's really the only substance of the movie, but it just doesn't go anywhere. It's a movie that's 80 minutes long, has 20 different jump scares, they're not effective. It's like somebody watched a YouTube short that said, "How to craft a jump scare. Do as many of them into the movie as possible." And they still don't work.

[00:05:08]Every trope in the book. You have obnoxiously stupid characters. You have loud jump scares that aren't effective, aren't earned such as people turning around, something's there, objects falling off, loud crash and booms, radios turning on. You have the token exposition character our main characters run into who explains the premise of the movie. You have characters looking on the internet through Reddit articles that have the answers to everything.

[00:05:30]Basically, every trope in the book. Oh, yeah, you have the couple not listening to their significant other. Wife suspects something, her husband doesn't agree with her. Everything possible in a movie that makes people hate horror films is in this movie, and they beat you over the head with it. There's not 5 minutes without a stupid trope in this film. Speaking of the characters in this movie, paper, cardboard, thin, especially the husband. This guy has no emotional range at all. He has no basic understanding of human beings. It's so obvious he's a character written for screen. He doesn't actually interact with other human beings. All this guy does is talk about romance, does not care about what his wife is warning him, does not care about anything. This is the most, again, Lifetime character.

[00:06:12]Even Lifetime characters, I've seen a couple of Lifetime movies. Those characters are more layered than this guy. And it kind of annoyed me how much he looked like Tobias Harris. But yeah, this guy is just an idiot. And the way he talks, his dialogue, it's obnoxious.

[00:06:24]There's a scene where his wife is talking to him explaining that an evil entity has latched onto them. He soon doesn't believe it. The next scene, he sees it. And then they're talking about what they're going to do. And all he keeps replying is, "There's got to be a way to shake them. Let's shake them up."

[00:06:37]Like, who talks like that? This is closer to The Exorcist than Rocket Power. This is one of the times I will directly tell you, the technical way this movie is made physically pissed me off. It has been a very long time since I watched a movie that actually annoyed me the way I watched this film. Now, this is not a found footage film, but the way a lot of people feel to watch found footage, shaky cam, overly using zoom, is how this movie feels. I mean, I left the theater with a borderline migraine the way this movie is filmed.

[00:07:06]It's not a found footage film, but it feels like it is. Shaky cam galore, the camera spins, does like 180s to try to catch you off guard, divert expectations. And the scares aren't effective, so it ends up pissing you off. It's like, why are you subjecting me to the torture chamber, spinning me around? So, you're getting nauseous, you're like getting vertigo watching the movie because the way it's filmed, it's so close up zoom, it's shaky cam, it's jolting back and forth, and none of the scares are worth it, so that's annoying.

[00:07:31]But the biggest issue I have is the way this movie is edited, and the way the cinematography is done. They thought they were creative. They're in the forest, they have flashlights, and you get [ __ ] flashbanged 15 times in this movie because they don't cut the lights, they don't edit it, where a camera is just looking dead into the beam of a flashlight when the guy's waving it around like a hose in the forest. Ah, I'm scared. And you And you're just getting clipped over and over again with rays of light directly into your eyes.

[00:07:58]There's actually a jump scare in this movie. It's not a scene, it's not a transition. They use this as a jump scare where a character turns around and your camera just gets flashbanged by the headlights of a car. That's the actual scene and the way it diverts your expectation. So, this movie almost made me physically ill. I was nauseous. It gave me like a headache from light blindness from getting shocked in the face in the pitch black. It was awful. I mean, one of the worst made films of the year. Again, the fact that this is such a talented director who did this and he did lighting in that movie and now he's doing this, inconceivable bad. And again, I would maybe forgive this if there was anything scary here, there was anything creepy here, if it went anywhere. There was just not. The plot goes absolutely nowhere. You get no explanation for anything. It drags ass.

[00:08:45]It's like you're towing 4 tons of freight behind your truck. That's how slow this movie goes. So, I will be very curious what other people think of this movie given the fact, again, for the final time, I almost guarantee they're all going to a movie like this because of that teaser trailer. And this movie is nothing like that. It's just a meet-cute rom-com, sort of minor found-footage feeling thriller with a ton of jump scares, like 15 or 20 of those forced jump scares I described and none of it is effective. So, overall, guys, this movie was physically painful to get through, insultingly dumb, easily one of the worst movies I have seen this year. In fact, this is easily one of the worst horror films I have seen in the last 5 years. Movie that made me check my shoes after I watched it because Passenger is dog [ __ ] So, if you guys got forsakenly checked out this movie like I did, please comment down below and let me know if you thought Passengers was as bad as I did or just comment the last time you got really hyped up for a movie and you thought the movie was terrible. Comment down below.

[00:09:44]I love hearing about misery. Misery loves company. As always, if you like this review, my name is Shawn. Like, comment, subscribe, hype the video, join the channel down below. If you want to support me, become a channel member. It does help. But other than that, guys, I will see y'all in the next review.

[00:09:57]Peace.