Passenger

Directed by André Øvredal, Passenger follows a couple (Jacob Scipio’s Tyler and Lou Llobell’s Maddie) as they’re menaced by a supernatural creature during a cross-country road trip. Filmmaker Øvredal, armed with a screenplay by T.W. Burgess and Zachary Donohue, delivers a progressively lackluster (and downright interminable) misfire that does, to be fair, get off to a relatively promising start, as Passenger opens with a decent pre-credits sequence that seems to promise an eerie, creepy little horror picture – with the movie, beyond that point, seguing into a sluggish and hopelessly uninvolving narrative focused on two almost astonishingly bland protagonists (ie they couldn’t possibly be less sympathetic or interesting). And while Øvredal has peppered the proceedings with a very small handful of effective set-pieces (eg Maddie attempts to make her way to her and Tyler’s van within a creepy parking lot), Passenger builds towards a completely tiresome (and thoroughly anticlimactic) final stretch that ensures the whole thing concludes on about as underwhelming a note as one could envision – with the final result a misguided endeavor that wears out its welcome virtually from the get-go.

* out of ****