Director André Øvredal (The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Trollhunter) gets horror deep in his bones. His newest feature, Passenger, takes the current millennial trend of van life and smashes it headfirst into classic 1980s urban-legend video-nasty logic. This kicked up a modest $31 million run on a tight $15 million budget—which feels just about right for a tight, 94-minute slice of road-rage creature-feature terror.
Maddie (Lou Llobell) and Tyler (Jacob Scipio) have dumped their soul-crushing day jobs to join the #VanLife crowd, cruising across North America in a customized camper. Six weeks into the trip, they celebrate an engagement on a residential curb before a neighborhood watch boomer chases them off. Things turn nasty fast when they pull over to assist a wrecked sedan on a pitch-black stretch of highway. Inside, a frantic driver (Miles Fowler) gets yanked into the shadows by something unseen, leaving three bloody claw marks across the doorframe.
Before long, Maddie realizes the claw marks are spreading to their van. After a spooky encounter with Diana (Melissa Leo), Maddie discovers the truth: they’ve drawn the attention of The Passenger (Joseph Lopez), a demonic entity that haunts lonely stretches of pavement. To make matters wilder, the plot leans heavily on Hobo Code lore—specifically the classic chalk-and-stick markings left by 1930s wanderers on billboards and fence posts—and on It Follows to warn each other about dangerous roads, aggressive dogs, or safe havens.
Where it gets a little wobbly is the climax: the movie shifts from slow-burn highway dread to a full-on 90s creature showdown involving the Church of St. Christopher, shape-shifting illusions and a van-impaling sequence that feels gloriously cheesy, if a bit jarring compared to the film’s eerie first half.
It won’t change your world, but it’s not bad.
