Passenger is an hour and a half of barely stitched together horror tropes and predictable jump scares with no point or redeeming message. Foul language, and some visceral flesh-ripping are part of the mix.
Tyler has a dream.
The work-a-day, settle down, grow-a-family life may be great for some people, but not Ty. Nope, he’s ready to buy a sweet RV and hit the open road. He dreams of driving the highways and byways of America. Enjoying the off-grid sights. And sharing a free life with girlfriend and soon-to-be fiancée, Maddie.
How will they pay for this new life? Well, that’s to be seen. There are ways. Hey, Ty’s former boss is even considering hiring him for totally remote work. Maddie can drive while Tyler brings in the bacon with a computer on his lap. And they won’t be tied down with rent or a mailbox full of bills. It sounds pretty perfect.
However, Maddie may not be quite as ecstatic about their potential nomad life. She’s had more than enough of that, jumping from foster family to foster family as a kid. But she’ll make do. After all, she is deeply in love with Ty. Um … well, she’s in love anyway. The deeply part might not be so sure. In fact, as Maddie takes her turn driving and looks at the sparkling ring Ty gave her, she’s not actually sure about a number of things. But they’ll work it out.
Here’s the thing, though. They say that 130 million people take road trips every year in this big, massive country of ours. And 15,400 of them are never seen again. In fact, amidst the group of travelers that take to the road in their RVs regularly, there’s a certain superstition about a ghostly “Passenger” that you never want to pick up—purposely or accidentally. In fact, the #VanLife crowd swears to two specific rules: Don’t drive at night. And don’t stop driving. You never stop.
Tyler and Maddie, however, are newbies. They don’t know the superstitions. They’ve never heard the “rules.” They just see the wreck on the side of the night-shrouded country road. They see the smoke. They hear the blaring car horn. And they feel compassion. Maddie pulls over the van to see if they can help.
And with that, Tyler’s dream turns down a dark road.
Maddie and Tyler care for each other. And though Maddie privately considers just how committed she is to a life with Tyler, the couple’s connection never wavers, even in the midst of great danger. They both put their lives on the line to protect one another.
The spiritual elements of this pic tend to twist and shift—and are never fully explained.
Early on, a traditional prayer to St. Christoper, the patron saint of travelers, is quoted: “Dear Saint Christopher, protect me today in all my travels along the road’s way. Give your warning sign if danger is near so that I may stop while the path is clear.”
Thereafter, the Catholic St. Christopher medal, that Tyler hangs on their RV’s rearview mirror, fills the “traditional” horror movie role of a cross. (We see a cross displayed once or twice throughout the film, but with no particular import attached to it.) The St. Christopher medal appears to burn the supernatural Passenger and scare it away on one occasion, but it doesn’t effect the being in other instances. Maddie mentions that she doesn’t give much credence to the medal, and Tyler jokes, “I guess you’re going to hell.”
It also appears at times that Maddie may be psychic or spiritually sensitive. She tends to see the ghostly Passenger when others don’t. Soon after the Passenger hitches itself to them, Maddie finds fruit she just bought has instantly turned rotten. At one point during Tyler and Maddie’s travels, the RV radio blares to life, featuring a Southern preacher calling sinners to repent.
As for the Passenger itself, this dark, demonic entity is something of an enigma in a not-fully-explained story. It moves in and out of dark shadows and leaps toward the camera in jump-scare moments. It also reaches out and grabs people with necrotized and gnarled hands—grabbing Maddie by the throat on several occasions. Doors open and close with its invisible passage.
Maddie happens to find a book called Haunted Highway at a random road stop, and it fills in a few details on the Passenger entity. It defines the Passenger as a demon that mysteriously attaches itself to people who stop to give aid at accidents along a dark road. And it ties the entity in with “Hobo Code” signs and symbols that supposedly guide plagued travelers to aid.
One of those hobo symbols is three parallel slashes that represent “not safe here,” a symbol that’s repeatedly scratched onto their RV. Tyler states that if that’s the case, they should burn the van and move on. But Maddie makes it clear that she believes the Passenger hasn’t simply marked the van, it’s marked them.
Maddie meets a #VanLife woman who points her to the “sanctified ground” of a mysterious St. Christopher church. Maddie then reads an online story about St. Christopher traveling with a stranger who turned out to be a demon.
[Spoiler Warning] Tyler and Maddie eventually follow hobo signs to an isolated, crumbling church that is built around a large stone statue of St. Christopher. In this “sacred” place, the entity is weakened and the couple battle it.
Maddie wears tight, form-fitting tops that sometimes bare her midriff. She and Tyler hug and kiss on several occasions. And it’s implied that they are living together even though they’re not married yet.
Much of Passenger’s violence comes from it’s namesake entity—often in the form of a creepy spiritual force that grabs, chokes and thumps around both Maddie and Tyler in the dark of night.
For instance, Maddie gets chased by the footfalls of an invisible entity. She also gets pulled forcibly into her seat by her seatbelt and a grasping, choking hand. Tyler gets pounded back and forth into the walls and ceiling of the RV and thrown out through its backdoors. Someone gets smashed face-first into a windshield and then yanked back out and pounded down, bloody and torn, to the tarmac. A ravaged and bloody man is quickly pulled from view while whispering pleas for help. We see a number of car crashes, the vehicles twisted and burning.
On other occasions, the violence is much more grisly. Someone’s leg gets crushed beneath a van that falls off its jack. His flesh then gets torn as he pulls the trapped limb free. An individual’s hand gets broken and crushed in a slamming RV door. The side of a man’s face is revealed to have been torn away and pulped. Maddie must drive through a field littered with dead bodies wrapped in sheets. The camera watches closely as the van’s wheels crush bodies and skulls to pulpy goop.
A woman gets grabbed from behind and her head is forcibly yanked backward over her vehicle’s headrest, snapping her neck and tearing open her throat to expose the gory musculature. Someone gets impaled on a long stone staff. And a church building bursts into a raging fire.
Passenger’s dialogue is spattered with more than a dozen f-words and eight s-words, along with several uses of the words “h—” and “a–.” Jesus’ name is misused once, and God’s is misused four times.
Maddie and Tyler celebrate and drink flutes of champagne. Creepy men smoke cigarettes and watch Maddie walk by. During #VanLife meetups, the gathered RV drivers drink beer and other boozy beverages.
Maddie makes it known that she likes the idea of having a home and raising a family together with Tyler, but Tyler declares, “Having both parents together doesn’t make it a home.” A guy urinates in the woods.
By my rough count, there have been more than 20 horror movies released so far in 2026. And box-office sources suggests that the total number of U.S. releases this year will easily triple that.
It seems that we Americans have a taste for low budget cinema of the creepy and gruesome sort. (Or at least, moviemakers hope we do.) And director André Øvredal’s latest contribution to that growing pile is barely worth making note of.
Passenger feels very much like a series of online horror shorts all tied together with a gossamer narrative thread. The story doesn’t venture beyond the most cursory of character particulars. There’s an odd blend of St. Christopher lore and “Hobo Code” jargon thrown in as a spiritual placeholder. And there’s no overarching or metaphorical point being made.
Granted, the central couple here is attractive, if not particularly likeable. And the scenes tag team between creepy and gruesome with a few creative style points in tow. But other than that, Passenger is simply a mishmash of profanity, predictable horror tropes and occasional grisly ripping of flesh.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
