Review: PASSENGER

After a prologue that gives away the monster but not the exact summoning, we meet couple Maddie and Tyler who have quit their job-bound lives to stay on the road in a well appointed van. Of course, they are going to meet the big bad but not until we get to know them a little. When they do, it's on until the big end and then the credits. 

Movies like this need a few things to work: a scary monster, appealing leads and a compelling legend. Well, we get the appealing leads. Jacob Scipio and Lou Llobell are very easy to like and the writers are careful to bring a little friction into the relationship. In the course of a few scenes, we learn that Maddie is less enthusiastic than Tyler about life on the road but he accomodates this with a few cheeky motel bookings to help ease the way and suggest that Tyler does value the relationship over the big project.

The scene comes along when they inevitably break the lore and invite the big bad along with them. Then it's pursuit, weird incidents and outright violence and end.The reason the big bad is that he is just bad. No great motivation behind his torment of the couple beyond them allowing him in by their breach. Ok, doesn't Hellraiser not care whether the earthlings are good or not, as long as they summon the Cenobites? Yes, but that is complicated by several line-crossings in the characters and familial relationships and makes for an unpredictable tale. This one starts, goes, keeps going, and ends pretty much exactly as you expect after the first couple of scenes.

That said, I'm sure director Andre Ovredal wouldn't be bothered by the criticism. Like the stable of filmmakers behind the Conjuring and Insidious franchises, it's all about the formula. I can choose not to pick the formula but, after the linear Troll Hunter, Autopsy of Jane Doe and the boring The Last Voyage of the Demeter, this one seemed to offer a kind of urban myth creep to it. But it's just jumpscares. Oh, one exception. There is a genuinely creepy sequence in a car park, the power of which completely transcends the rest of the film which, after its moved on, just flattens out again into cruise control. Seems trivialising but I did appreciate how wounds received in the action were attended to and dressed.

I could probably watch any number of two cent found footage movies on Tubi and find at least three that unnerve me in some way. The thing I didn't list above that this film didn't supply is suspense. There's none. Big bad turns up, seems to have supernatural powers, and does his stuff. Next.