Passenger (2026) - Movie Review

Añadido: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]This could have been one of the best horror short films of all time.

[00:00:04]Unfortunately, you're stuck in the passenger seat for an extra 90 minutes.

[00:00:17]What is up, guys? Welcome to my review of Passenger. This is a new supernatural horror film by director Andre Overdall, who is the guy that brought us the autopsy of Jane Doe, as well as scary stories to tell in the dark. both of which I enjoy quite a bit. And most recently, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, which I wasn't as high on, but this film, Passenger, is one that really got put on my radar back when the teaser trailer dropped all the way back in, I think, January. And it's one of the most effective horror teaser trailers that I've seen in a very long time. It's essentially the opening of the movie that's been edited down, but it is a really creepy and effective sequence about these two guys that pull off on this road, and one of them goes off to take a piss. comes back and his friend is gone. And as he drives off, he sees this very eerie image that leads to one of the best crafted jump scares that I have ever seen. I didn't know anything about the plot. I didn't know anything about how that relates to the overall film or if that is in fact even in the movie or just some very clever little short film that they dropped to promote what's going to be a totally different story. I didn't know, but that definitely put this movie on my radar.

[00:01:24]And unfortunately, the movie is going to end up being one of the more generic and pretty quickly forgettable horror films of 2026. But there's some good things here. So, let's start talking about the positives. First of all, that opening sequence. I mean, it's about 6 or so minutes long in the edit of the film versus like the 2-minute teaser. But, it is a really effective opening for a movie. I would actually venture to say it's one of the more effective horror openings that I've seen in the last number of years. And if that was the entirety of what this movie was going for was that six, seven minute sequence and it was like a horror short film, whoever made that would be getting festival buzz. They'd be winning awards.

[00:02:06]They would have studios looking at them going, "How much money do you need and what story do you want to tell? Because this shit's awesome." It's just unfortunate that once the title card comes up and we get the rest of the movie, there's nothing in this movie that comes anywhere close to as wellcrafted and well executed and how effectively scary that opening is. And here I am trying to skip to the negatives already. That opening sequence is great. It's shot well. It's it's very wellcraftrafted. And as I said, the jump scare that pays it off before the title card is legitimately one of the best jump scares that I've seen in a horror film in years. Like if I was to rank top 20 jump scares in movies, it's got a shot at cracking that list. That's how damn good it is. There is like a van life, nomad life type theme to this movie where the two main characters are somebody that like to live off the grid.

[00:02:55]They live in their little mobile uh home altered van where they just kind of travel the country and they end up in different spots, different little communities that are campgrounds or people that all kind of live in their vehicles and stay mobile. And I thought that was actually a really interesting culture, a really interesting uh choice of life, like a lifestyle to really dive into. I wish the movie dove into it more, but even the bit that we do get here is intriguing. Uh that's something that is so opposite of how I would operate. I'm not somebody that would want to stay mobile. I very much like to plant roots and have a home base and have somewhere to go home to that is not on wheels that it fascinates me. So I think it's an interesting place to have some main characters and maybe even tie it into some of the themes of the entity which again they don't do the best job of but the foundation is there. And just like in movies like Insidious, whenever you have an entity that isn't, you know, relegated to a house or a haunted building or even a city or a state that no matter where you go, you can't escape it. Of course, that raises the stakes quite a bit and it makes it to where you can't just run away, which is often times something you can look at many horror films going, "Why the [ __ ] did you stay in the house? Just haul ass.

[00:04:08]You're fine." Melissa Leo has a small character in this movie, and I think her performance is pretty good. Now, I do have some things to talk about with the way that her character is written and utilized. But overall, I think she is the best actress. You know, they're the best person of acting caliber in this movie. She's been around forever and so pretty easily to understand. Whenever she pops up, you go, "Okay, this is a character that's going to stand out." I also liked Jacob Cypio and his performance and and a decent amount about how his character was written.

[00:04:35]Now, you'll most or at least I most recognize him from the last two Bad Boys films. He's the character who's revealed to be Will Smith's son, and I enjoyed him in those movies. And in here, what I like about him is that he doesn't fall victim to the typical fiance boyfriend tropes because the female side of this relationship is the one who is most often haunted by this entity, the one that has seen all the creepy stuff and kind of diving into all the lore, where he's more the one who's a little bit slower to believe her, but it's never a point where he thinks that she's crazy or he writes her off. You know, that's another horror trope that I think is utilized too often to keep a story going for feature length. He's one of those people that he doesn't see it, but he believes her and he takes it seriously to the point of trying to make her feel safe in any way that he can. So, I enjoyed that about his character and I think he has pretty good chemistry with Lulu Bell, who plays his fianceé. And while it never gets anywhere near the level of greatness of the opening sequence and the jump scare that pays that off, there is some creepy moments throughout the movie. There are some pretty solid jump scares throughout.

[00:05:38]There is some pretty cool things done with darkness and shadows. It's an entity kind of similar to lights out in the way that it's visualized where in brightly lit areas you can't really see it, but as soon as the lights go out, you kind of see a silhouette, you see shadow differences where something is lurking in the night, and that can be pretty effective. So, you know, for the entity being something that is always omnipresent, you never know when it's going to pop up. You never know when it's going to come for you. I think there's a couple of sequences where they do set it up pretty well for a decent jump scare. And the last positive that I will give is that I do think there is a pretty wellexecuted oneshot sequence in the middle of the film. It takes place in a parking lot of a gym. And it what I liked about it was you can very easily see like how they blocked this sequence out and how they had to really choreograph vehicles moving at the right time and getting out of frame at the right time while moving the camera at a constant speed. And so as you see the movie, you'll know the sequence I'm talking about, but it's a basically a character trying to get to the van.

[00:06:38]that's their source of escape. And every single time they turn around, the van is farther away. And it's all done in camera. It's all done in one shot. So, I thought that was actually a pretty cool little ambitious sequence. But moving on to the negatives. Like I said earlier, this is just one of the more generic and cliché ridden forgettable horror films that we've seen so far this year. It's not one of the worst. You know, I've seen much worse so far this year. I'm sure there's going to be a couple more that I have yet to see that will be significantly more offensive than this movie is. It just belongs in that category, but by the end of the year, I'm going to look back on it and go, "Oh, yeah. What what happened in that one?" Once you get past that great opening sequence, it just feels like the movie doesn't really have any cool or original or exciting ideas and so often relies on tired tropes or recycled plot points that we've seen in so many other films. And the movie basically just ends up being yet another haunted entity type film. And all of the things that make this unique or at least that they're trying to make this unique with just feel like lateral moves. You know, instead of it being a cursed object or a box that they opened or a [ __ ] whistle that they blew that they shouldn't have this, it's just, oh, you stopped on the road because you stopped.

[00:07:45]Now the guy's haunting you. And then once the characters are cursed, it just goes through the motions of every other cursed style movie ever where there's a couple of jump scares, there's some footage that she looks at that initially there's nothing there, but then suddenly when nobody else is around, she can see it and then when she goes back to it, the thing is gone. So trying to have that bit of disbelief there, which I said, luckily they didn't fall too hard into that trope of having her fiance be the non-believing husband. But regardless, the the setup is still there. And then eventually, despite the fact that I like her performance, you get the reveal of the Melissa Leo character, who is yet again the middle-aged woman who is our exposition lore dump character, where she just randomly shows up and she's like, "Oh, hey, here's all the [ __ ] that you need to know for the next 30 minutes of this movie, and then eventually they're seeking her out again for more answers."

[00:08:37]And so many movies do this to the point where it's almost ridiculous. As soon as you see the middle-aged white woman show up, you're like, "Okay, she's going to have all the [ __ ] answers." Leading all the way up to a final act that to me just had no bite to it whatsoever, you know, all having to do with this church in the middle of nowhere. And it's like, why would this church be in the middle of nowhere in the first place? And it really stretched believability to the point where I was getting frustrated with just the entity itself because there's multiple points in the movie, one in particular, where it shows that this entity does not [ __ ] around. Like there's a spot where they're starting to somewhat have some hope and this entity just pops up and kills somebody within two seconds violently, gory.

[00:09:20]Yet, he doesn't bother trying to kill the two main characters that are getting really [ __ ] close to figuring out how to vanquish him. And all throughout the third act, that's all I'm thinking. It's like, how did you just show up? You just teleported into the scene earlier and took somebody out in two seconds effortlessly. But yet, I'm supposed to believe that you're struggling for the last 15 minutes of this movie to take out the main two characters. One of those writing pitfalls you have to be very careful not to put yourself into.

[00:09:46]You can't have your entity seem badass and unstoppable before the end of the second act, and then all of a sudden in the third act, you put all these random blockades that don't feel consistent. I also didn't care too much for Lulu Bell's character. I don't necessarily think it's an acting issue. I think a lot of it is the writing, although she certainly doesn't elevate the writing so much in certain sequences. She very much is the character that has to figure out the lore and the rules and how we're going to do this. And so, whenever you have a scene that she's trying to explain what she has learned to her fiance, that really fell flat for me.

[00:10:20]And I almost even struggled to believe that that character would be the the non-tropy character of like, okay, u I don't exactly see what you're saying, but I believe you. I support you. It's like, no, the [ __ ] that you're saying sounds [ __ ] crazy. Okay, there's a ghost following us, but there's all these little hobo signs, and that's how we should have known. It's very similar to like the Final Destination movies where you always have that scene where the main character really starts to buy into the rules and the lore and they're trying to lay it out to all the other characters and everybody else who has common sense is like absolutely not.

[00:10:51]There's not some [ __ ] grim reaper spirit following us around. What are you talking about? Which is the understandable response to have until it gets to the point in the movie where it's undeniable. You have that here, but the dialogue in Final Destination style movies feels like it's self-aware at how silly it is and it's almost going for the camp. You know, think about the sequence in Final Destination Bloodlines where the main character is being really paranoid about all the different things leading up to that garbage can kill it.

[00:11:17]It's all a part of the setup. In this movie, it's taken itself dead seriously when it's doing those sequences, but the delivery and the tone of that dialogue is exactly the same. Overall guys, there's not a whole lot to say about this one. There's not a whole lot to unpack about Passenger. It's a shame that the rest of the movie couldn't match up to that outstanding opening.

[00:11:35]You know, this is one of those movies where I almost think that you could get everything out of just watching the teaser trailer and just skipping the movie altogether. So, on an otherwise pretty strong month for horror with Hokum that a lot of people are loving and then Obsession of course, which is becoming a massive hit. Jury is out on back rooms which will be next week's release. Passenger is the movie this month. you can very easily just skip over. There's nothing here that you have not seen in two dozen horror films over the last 15 years. Well, that's it for this one, guys. If you enjoyed that, please click over here for all of my 2026 new release reviews. I'm also going to put like my video essay style spoiler review that I did for Obsession. The video has been causing a lot of different conversation and debates, which is really cool. So, check that out if you've seen Obsession. Like, share, hit the subscribe button so you don't miss everything in the future. And as always, remember, opinions are like [ __ ] but that doesn't mean you have to