Passenger (2026) Review — The Jump Scare Horror That’s Better Than Its 48% Suggests

Passenger

Director: André Øvredal

Date Created: 2026-05-22 22:08

Editor's Rating:
3.5

Pros

• Jump scares
• Low-light cinematography prowess
• A central couple with real chemistry and a relationship worth caring about
• Sound design
• Creature mythology with genuine dept

Cons

• Breaks its own established lore
• The creature's visual design leans on a familiar archetype without meaningfully updating it
• A 48% Rotten Tomatoes score
• Best experienced in cinema or with headphones

Film Title: Passenger (2026)

Cast: Jacob Scipio (Tyler), Lou Llobell (Maddie), Melissa Leo (Diana), Devielle Johnson

Director: André Øvredal

Writers: T.W. Burgess, Zachary Donohue

Distribution: Paramount Pictures Production: 18hz

Release Date: May 22, 2026

Watched on: Streaming subscription

Review by: Mother of Movies

Passenger (2026) — The Road Horror

The director behind Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and The Last Voyage of the Demeter returns with Passenger, a highway horror from Paramount Pictures that throws out one fundamental truth: the scariest moments happen when you stop moving.

Passenger doesn’t waste time. Daniel steps out of a van on a dark highway to find a tree line, and by the time he gets back, everything has changed… for him, for his driver, Lucas, and for the couple who made the mistake of stopping at the wrong crash scene twenty minutes later.

The setup taps into just how vulnerable we are at night on an unfamiliar road. The execution works because Øvredal’s elevates material that could have been disposable.

For a film sitting at 48% on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s a more effective watch than that number implies, though the critics aren’t entirely wrong either. There’s a fault line running through it, and it’s structural. But we’ll get there.

What the Highway Horror Gets Absolutely Right

The jump scares got me. They worked for me, even though admittedly I’m a lightweight for that type of thing. When you’ve seen enough horror to have developed scar tissue, a genuine flinch response is still hard-won. The creature, a grey-haired, long-limbed spectre with the energy of something ancient and furious, isn’t visually the most original design you’ll encounter. But Øvredal shoots it in ways that make the familiar feel wrong. Torchlit forests, a van interior used in a way that appeases those that love a single location vibe and, a projector screen in the middle of the dark. These aren’t just locations, they’re setups, and every one of them pays off.

The sound design deserves its own sentence. When the creature is fully present, the noise surrounding it feels less like a score and more like being inside something enraged. Heavy impacts on the van roof, a wall of sound that closes in from every direction. It’s the kind of audio work that makes headphones a requirement, and a cinema screen would’ve made it something else entirely. Missing this one theatrically stings a little in retrospect.

The Couple at the Centre

Lou Llobell and Jacob Scipio are doing more than the script sometimes asks of them. Maddie and Tyler are a couple at a crossroads, she came from a difficult home and wants roots. He came from a difficult home and wanted to escape it, so the road became his answer. They love each other, but she’s started to have doubts about whether van life is a life she actually wants, and that tension is present in every scene before the horror fully takes over.

Tyler is written almost too well in giving off green flag energ He sets up an outdoor cinema in the woods, he listens, he adjusts, but Scipio plays him with enough warmth that it doesn’t tip into wish-fulfilment caricature. The proposal scene was nice because you’ve actually bought them as a unit. When he eventually sees the creature for himself and shifts into full protective mode, the dread of watching someone you like head towards danger is real.

The Lore Is Good… Until It Isn’t

The mythology around the Passenger is one of the film’s most detailed niche. If It Follows and Leviticus needed a third contender for an entity that marks you, this would be it. It even has a backstory: A road crew worker from the 1800s, known by name travellers whisper to each other about on certain stretches of highway. The Passenger is documented in roadside books kept by long-haul drivers who knew the rules: don’t stop, don’t engage, don’t let the marks appear on your vehicle.

The three-scratch mark as a death sentence is simple and effective. The vagrant sign system used to track the creature’s history, each symbol carrying meaning, uncovered through a book Maddie finds along the way, gives the world texture without over-explaining it.

So the lore is doing its job. Which is exactly why the moment it breaks its own rules lands like a flat tyre at speed.

A character, not marked, not a direct target, travelling in her own separate vehicle, is killed by the creature before the central couple have even left the campsite. The whole campsite clears out at their arrival, which tracks. But this death doesn’t. If the spirit marks its victims and follows them, it shouldn’t be reaching out and taking unmarked bystanders in their own cars. It’s not a minor inconsistency. It’s the kind of rule-break that makes you recalibrate everything you thought you understood about the threat, and not in a way the film intends.

One of the writers has The Den on their record, which is a tight, well-constructed found-footage film. Passenger is still a good film, I just wish it was better. If the spirit can kill unmarked victims, the rules don’t matter. If the rules don’t matter, the tension collapses.

Øvredal’s Fingerprints

This is a director who knows what darkness is for. Every underlit frame in Passenger feels considered, the torchlight in the trees, the projector casting shapes onto canvas while something moves at the edge of the light. There’s a specific kind of dread in watching characters try to function normally in spaces that have already been compromised, and Øvredal stages that in a memorable way. The film looks like it was built for a cinema screen, and the streaming version, while still effective, carries the faint ghost of a bigger experience.

Who This Is For

If you scare easily, this is a very good night in. The jump scares are frequent enough to keep you on edge and well-timed enough to justify the tension built around them. If you’re a seasoned horror viewer, the aesthetic will hold your interest even when the script wobbles. The couple are worth spending time with, the creature is well-deployed even if not visually groundbreaking, and the road-horror subgenre hasn’t had something this committed in a while.

The 48% is harsh. It’s also not entirely wrong. But there’s a version of this film, with one scene rewritten and one rule respected, that sits comfortably in the 70s and becomes a genre recommendation. As it stands, it’s still worth the drive.

Passenger is rated

3.5 Unmarked Roads out of 5

Streaming Options

The Passenger Spoiler and Ending Explained

Similar Titles with Horror on the Road or an Entity that Marks you

• The Hitcher (1986) — The original highway horror template: a stranger, a road, and a threat that won’t stay behind you.
• It Follows (2014) — A transmitted curse with its own movement rules; the film Passenger most resembles in structure and dread logic.
• The Den (2013) — Co-writer T.W. Burgess’s tighter, leaner thriller; watch it to see what the lore-building in Passenger was reaching for.
• Leviticus (2026) — Two men discover that there is more to the churches powers than they anticpated.
• Duel (1971) — No supernatural element, or road but the same essential terror: something on the road has chosen you, and the reason doesn’t matter.
• Jacker Trilogy Tribute to independent filmmaker horror highway films made across decades.
• Anscestral Beasts (2026) — Monsters in old houses and family history secrets.

What Kind of Horror Movie Victim Are You Quiz

 

Results

The Screamer

You never had a plan. That was never really the point. Your cat clocked the noise before you did and legged it to see what was up, your dog wanted answers you didn’t have, and by the time you were alone with whatever was in the house, the only weapon you’d committed to was volume.

You screamed at the storm when the lights cut out. You screamed at deals you shouldn’t have taken. You screamed loud enough that the neighbours definitely heard, even if the house itself stayed indifferent to your fate. It wasn’t strategy, it wasn’t dignity, it was pure Casey Becker energy, alone in a big house, on the phone, finding out the hard way that “I’ll be right there” doesn’t count for much.

You didn’t survive the night. You made sure everyone remembers exactly how loud you tried.

The Fighter

You never once considered losing gracefully. The lamp went first, your ex’s, thrown hard, thrown personal. Then straight to the kitchen for round two, because one improvised weapon was a start, not a finish line.

Every choice after that followed the same logic: don’t wait, don’t freeze, meet the threat head-on and bring something heavier next time. This is Ripley-in-the-power-loader energy, squaring up against something twice her size and refusing to be the one who backs down first. You didn’t win clean, and you probably didn’t win quiet, but nothing about you went down easy, and whatever was hunting you walked away worse for the encounter.

The Strategist

While everyone else panicked, screamed, or swung blindly, you were already three moves ahead. You waited by the woods instead of chasing the sound, because real distress doesn’t sob on cue at 2am in the middle of nowhere.

You saw the wrongness and let it come to you instead, and it never did. You built traps before you needed them, and treated every unknown room, offer, or noise as a puzzle to be solved rather than a threat to be survived. This is pure Leaven-in-Cube energy, cracking the pattern nobody else could see fast enough to matter, staying calm because panic never got anyone through a locked door.

You didn’t always win. But you were never caught flat-footed, and out of everyone here, you’re the one who actually had a plan.

The Sacrificial Lamb

You were doing so well! Right up until the moment the story needed someone to hold the line, and something in you decided that someone would be you. Not an accident, not a trip in the dark, a choice, made fast, made on purpose, because the alternative was watching someone else pay for it instead.

This is David-from-Evil Dead-2013 energy: locking the door onthe person you loved most, staying on the wrong side of it yourself, and making sure the fire did the rest. You didn’t die because you were careless. You died because you decided, in the one moment that counted, that it wasn’t going to be someone else.

#1. You hear a strange noise in the middle of the night. What do you do?

If you live alone, your cat will come running. If you don't have a cat, your dog will want to find out what all that noise is. If you're alone in your house, does your scream really make a sound?

The nearest thing to you before you start runnning is the lamp, but that's ok, it was your exes and you throw it as hard as you can and run to the kitchen to find as many weapons as possible.

You wait patiently running only when neccessary. If your thorough planning has told you one thing, it's that all traps are good traps.

You run, you're doing awesome but just as you have seen but never believed, an errant root causes you to trip. You fall on you face as you scream and end up with a mouthful of dirt.

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#2. You’re at a creepy abandoned house. What’s your first move?

In your left pocket is your trusty personal alarm and some deoderant and a lighter (because who knows where to buy mace?) In your other hand Petrina, your trusty cricket bat from highschool. You don't hesitate to go in.

You two friends are likeminded adrenaline chasers. Together you hatch a plan before heading in. However sometimes these things happen organically and because you have already researched the place, you grab your torch out of the car too.

There's no way you're going in there. You wait in the car.

It's just you and your friend and they seem keen so you agree. But only if you can lead the way.

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#3. The killer is chasing you! What’s your escape strategy?

Slamming doors behind you, and fumbling for a way out, you scream in raw desperation.

With a mischievous grin, you scramble up the stairs, booby traps springing into action. You hear shrieking and it isn't you.

Bloodied but unyielding, you scramble out a shattered window. You keep running, knowing full well where the weapons are.

With a grim resolve, you step into the path of the attackers, deliberately drawing their attention to protect the others.

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#4. You find a mysterious book in the basement. What do you do?

Ignoring the cryptic warning scrawled across the cover, you recite the strange words aloud, you voice trembles as the air grows unnaturally cold around you.

Clutching the dusty artifact, you carry it to the attic. As you hear the faint whispers trailing behind you, you head for the safe room. You've got a blueprint in your back pocket.

Without hesitation, you toss the cursed item into the roaring flames, the air fills with acrid smoke and what sounds disturbingly like distant screams. Wait, did fire wake it up?

You back away slowly from the eerie discovery, locking the door behind you. If anyone's going to find out what happens when you recite the words, it's you. No one else needs to know.

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#5. You hear someone crying in the woods. What do you do?

Someone might genuinely need help, and you're not the type to leave that to chance. This makes you either a hero or a cautionary tale. Statistically, it's the cautionary tale.

You've seen every horror movie ever made. You know exactly how this goes. You go check anyway, because what if it's a lost puppy? It is never a lost puppy.

Real distress doesn't sob on cue in the middle of nowhere at 2am. You clock the wrongness immediately and don't move an inch. If it wants you, it can come get you. It doesn't.

You yell "WHO'S THERE" into the dark like that's ever worked out for anyone, grab the nearest branch, and head in swinging-ready. If it's small, you'll help it. If it's not, you're already mid-swing.

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#6. The power goes out during a storm. What do you do?

You grab a torch, decide the fog outside looks "probably fine," and head to the shops for supplies anyway. It is not fog. It is never fog.

No power means no information, so the first thing you do is seal yourself somewhere defensible and wait it out. You don't trust the dark. You don't trust anyone either, storm or no storm.

Storm's still going, water's rising, and you go back in for the family pet instead of leaving well enough alone. Noble. Insane. Extremely on brand. You might even try and get to the basement to check the breaker.

You go outside to check on the downed power line yourself, because someone should, and someone really should not have been you. The ground has other plans.

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#7. A friend suggests using a Ouija board. What do you do?

You're the one who insists on doing it "properly," rules and all, because someone needs to keep everyone safe. Ironically, that's exactly what gets you.

You know it's a bad idea, you've seen the movie, and you sit down at the board anyway because your friend already lit the candles and it'd be rude not to.

Warn them about the dangers but stay. You ask all the right questions first — who's doing this, why, what's the actual plan if something answers — and you're the only one still thinking clearly when the planchette starts moving on its own.

You treat the board like a challenge, not a warning, and demand the spirit prove itself. It does. You are, somehow, still swinging afterwards.

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#8. You’re offered a deal by the villain. What do you do?

You know refusing to help would be the smart move, but you cave under pressure and take the deal anyway, then spend the rest of the film finding out exactly how loud you can scream about it.

You don't negotiate, you don't play along, you're already looking for the exit, the weapon, or the loophole in the rules while the villain's still mid-monologue.

You go in fully aware of what you're negotiating with, calculating every clause and outcome, certain you're smart enough to outmaneuver the terms. You're not wrong to try. You're just not quite right either.

You take the deal knowing exactly what it costs, because it's for someone you love and you'd rather pay the price yourself than live with the alternative. It goes about as well as everyone warned you it would.

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Final Result!