Passenger Review

The new movie "Passenger" is tawdry, nonsensical, frustrating and boring, when it's not funny for all the wrong reasons. It tells the story of a young couple who live out of their RV when, one night after witnessing a car accident, are "marked" by a mysterious folk demon who terrorizes travelers under the moonlight. In other words, it's "The Hitcher" with ghosts.

Jacob Scipio and Lou Llobell star as Tyler and Maddie, respectively, a young couple of very different upbringings. He comes from a broken home, and she the foster system, and for some reason they decide that the best way to find some form of stable life is living out of an RV. The two have packed up their belongings and quit their cushy New York City jobs as, something- ohh I'm sorry, did I say quit? I meant "retired." I mention this only because it's about the only other character development either receive.

On their first night on the open road, a speeding car pulls up next to them, their windshield smashed and the driver in a frenzy. They slow down to let them pass, thinking maybe it's a drunk or road rager, but a few miles up, they see the car in a ditch. It's crashed into the neighboring trees, so the two pull over to make sure the driver is alright. (These must be the nicest New Yorkers ever on film.) He's not and soon the cops arrive, but not before Maddie notices scratch marks on the back of the car. She then thinks she sees someone hidden in the woods, but even when they notice their van now has the same scars, she shakes it off like any good heroine in a horror movie would.

They then attend a nomad gathering for other people who live in their van, and boy, is Tyler in his element- he even finds someone who can buff out the scratch. Maddie, however, is fixated on a missing peoples board (she must be fun at parties), when she soon bumps into a fellow van-lifer (Melissa Leo), an old woman who warns never to drive at night and never stop for anything as if it's common knowledge. You'd think it'd be in the car's manual.

But Maddie keeps seeing things, a man specifically, dressed in black with his face obscured in the shadows, but only when she's near the vehicle. Inside a motel room? Shopping in an antique shop? Working out at a 24/7 gym? No strange visions. You would think she could simply stop living in the RV, but she explicitly discards that idea as "not how she thinks this works." I dunno, I thought it was at least worth a shot.

Anyway, at first it's only Maddie who is being stalked by the unseen stranger, but eventually Tyler begins to see it too. Now both of them are in a panic, and the two decide to hightail it to where they know that elderly vagabond from before was heading (you'd think they'd belong to the same Facebook group or something). Driving only under sunlight, they eventually track her down, where she lore-dumps what's going on. Yup you guessed it, they're being hunted by an ancient evil spirit and their only possible way out is, well, you get where this is going.

"Passenger" runs out of steam well before its final act, asking characters to do dumb things only dumb characters do in dumb horror movies, like crawling under an RV for lug nuts or wandering away from each other with the only light being the blinking red flash of taillights. You can tell exactly when something is going to jump out and yell "boo," by the way the music stops and the camera gets real close to someone's face, and that pattern is detected early on and never deviated from.

Then there's the villain himself, the "Passenger" as it were. He is chronically goofy looking, like an aging Cory Feldman with his face painted white. It's a laughable excuse for a horror movie icon. He looks more smelly than scary.

Seen in a relatively packed theater, the audience sat in total silence throughout its ninety some odd minute runtime, the myriad of painfully telegraphed jump scares failing to elicit any emotion from the crowd. I, for one, laughed a few times, rolled my eyes even more, but mostly, I tried with all my vigor not to fall asleep. (Movie tickets ain't cheap, ya know?)