‘Passenger’ Review: Hitchhiking Ghost Takes the Highway to Ho-Hum
The review says the film’s jump scares fail to surprise and its road-trip details feel slightly off from American authenticity.
- Directed by Andr, the horror film Passenger arrives in theaters on Friday, following a couple living in a high-tech van who encounter a mysterious hitchhiker during their cross-country journey.
- Young lovers Tyler and Maddie abandoned their cartoonishly gigantic apartment to live nomadically in a high-tech van, seeking a new lifestyle while traveling across the country.
- Along the way, Tyler and Maddie pick up the Passenger , who marks their vehicle with a hobo sign meaning 'this is not a safe place,' which the director likens to Michael Meyers threatening Haddonfield, Illinois.
- The couple searches for ghosts using a film projector outside their van, watching Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck while peering through classic Hollywood faces to find spirits in the forest.
- Andr's film struggles to maximize its premise between brief, memorable set pieces, and the boogeyman is not destined to become a classic horror icon like Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees.
12 Articles
12 Articles
'Passenger' Is A Van-Life Horror Movie Running on Empty
Paramount Pictures Different movies serve different functions. Some are profound and staggering works of art; others are meant as disposable fodder for first dates and people looking for somewhere cool to hang out when their air conditioning is busted. Passenger has no real ambitions beyond the latter, and its lack of pretension is the majority of this mid-tier studio programmer’s charm. That being said, despite the stylistic efforts of director…
Norwegian director André Øvredal, who has entered the consciousness of horror fans with films such as The Mystery of the Death of Miss Unknown or Trollhunter, is coming up with the film Passenger. He ambitiously defines the genre as a haunted house on wheels. The skillfully mastered spectacle is marred by clichés, certain absurdities in the plot and, above all, the unnecessary revelation of the monster. The film entered Czech cinemas on Thursday.
‘Passenger’ Review: Hitchhiking Ghost Takes the Highway to Ho-Hum
Every famous horror monster has their own thing. Freddy Krueger kills you in your dreams. Jigsaw sticks you in elaborate deathtraps. The dead kid from “The Ring” makes pretentious experimental shorts. But underneath their superficial gimmickry, the best movie monsters hit us on a fundamental level. Freddy is a living nightmare, and we all have nightmares. Jigsaw asks how much pain you would endure just to stay alive, which calls into question ou…
‘Passenger’ Review: André Øvredal Shatters the Fantasy of Van Life in a Brutal and Ghostly Road Trip
Jacob Scipio and Lou Llobell star as doomed lovers taking a supernatural thrill ride that's packed with nerve-shredding jump scares, but could use some more emotional fuel.
‘Passenger’ Review – A Gorgeous Yet Bland Haunted House Road Trip
The Autopsy of Jane Doe director André Øvredal trades the claustrophobic chills of a small town morgue for the open road in his latest haunted house horror feature, Passenger. Despite the filmmaker’s considerable talents and a novel concept for a nomadic style haunting, though, Øvredal’s latest winds up falling asleep at the wheel. After an effective cold open that sees a road trip among friends run afoul of the eponymous entity, Passenger intro…
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