Passenger (2023) Movie Review: Tense & Uneven

The set-up is elegantly simple. Young couple Tyler Genocchio (Scipio) and Maddie Brecker (Llobell) are living the van-life dream - crisscrossing the American Southwest in a retrofitted Ford Transit, documenting their travels for social media. Then one moonless night on a lonely stretch of Nevada highway, they witness a multi-car pileup so gruesome it leaves them shaken and covered in glass. They stay to help survivors, but as the chaos subsides, they realize something came back with them inside the van. A demonic presence - simply called the Passenger - that latches onto its victims like a parasite and will not stop until it has claimed them both. What follows is a claustrophobic game of cat-and-mouse inside a space that was supposed to mean freedom.

Øvredal has always had a gift for making the familiar feel hostile. Here, the van becomes a character in its own right - every creak of a cabinet, every reflection in the rearview mirror, every inexplicable shift in the shadows. The director shoots the interior with a documentary-like intimacy, putting us right there in the driver’s seat with Tyler and Maddie. The result is a horror movie that doesn’t need a big budget to deliver big scares. The Passenger manifests in subtle ways at first: a face in the window that vanishes, a radio station that plays only static with an embedded voice, the smell of burnt rubber that lingers even after the engine is off.

Scipio and Llobell are terrific together. Their chemistry sells the early warmth of the relationship, which makes the psychological unraveling hit harder. Tyler is the pragmatist, trying to logic his way out of the nightmare; Maddie is more intuitive, more open to the supernatural explanation. Their dynamic keeps the dialogue sharp and grounded. Melissa Leo shows up as Diana Larson, a grizzled truck-stop waitress who knows more than she lets on, and she delivers her scenes with the kind of weary gravitas that makes exposition feel like hard-won wisdom.

The film’s best sequence - a single, unbroken nine-minute shot inside the van as the Passenger torments the couple by distorting the van’s space - is a masterclass in sustained suspense. Øvredal lets the camera roam, and we feel every inch of that suffocating cabin. It’s the kind of scene that will have you checking your back seat on the drive home.

That said, the third act introduces a mythos around the Passenger that feels a bit rushed. The explanation of how it binds to witnesses of violent death involves a convoluted ritual that muddles the primal terror the film built so well. And while Joseph Lopez’s physical manifestation of the Passenger is unsettling in its stillness, the design leans a little too close to “Ringu”-era creepiness rather than something truly new. Still, these are minor complaints in a film that understands that the real horror is not the monster outside the window, but the fact that you can’t escape it from inside the one place you thought was safe.

Pros

• Stunning use of a single location - the van becomes a claustrophobic nightmare
• Terrific lead performances from Scipio and Llobell, with genuine emotional stakes
• Patient, slow-burn pacing that pays off in a masterful extended take
• Melissa Leo adds lived-in texture to a small but pivotal role
• Genuinely unsettling sound design and score

Cons

• Third-act lore dump bogs down the primal tension
• The Passenger’s visual design feels derivative of other well-known horror icons
• A couple of logical leaps (why not just abandon the van?) go unaddressed
• Supporting characters outside the van are thinly drawn

“Passenger” may not reinvent the horror wheel, but it puts the wheel inside a van and spins it until you’re dizzy with dread. Øvredal proves that the most terrifying monster is the one that shares your last square foot of space. For a summer movie that’s willing to take its time, get under your skin, and stay there, this one’s worth the ride. Buckle up - and don’t look in the rearview mirror.