Starring Lou Llobell, Jacob Scipio, Melissa Leo  

Directed by André Øvredal

Paramount Pictures – in cinemas now

 After Maddie and Tyler throw in their comfy city existence for life on the road, they witness a gruesome highway accident, but soon realize they did not leave the crash scene alone – a demonic presence from the highway is determined to claim them both.

Watching André Øvredal’s jump-scare road horror, Passenger, this week, I found myself transported back to the dreamy netherworld of the latter days of the Covid pandemic, where, to compound our collective misery, the Academy thought it would be a good idea to award the Best Picture Oscar to Nomadland, one of the most underwhelming movies to receive a statuette since the mind-numbing English Patient twenty-four years earlier. How much more entertaining Nomadland would have been, I thought, had quirky, no-nonsense Frances McDormand been pursued around Dakota in her RV (or ‘camper van’ to us Brits) by a murderous road demon.

Indeed, there’s a nod to Ms. McDormand in Melissa Leo’s portrayal of nomadic old-timer Diana, warning the young couple (Lou Lloubell and Jacob Scipio) of the folly of stopping to help anyone who’s had an accident for fear of picking up the eponymous bad lift.

Passenger is nuts and bolts jump-scare stuff, but it’s not without moments of originality along the way. There’s an excellent Hitchcockian set piece featuring a video screening of the classic movie Roman Holiday with far more sinister forces than Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn on the loose. The setting, amid the beardy RV nomad community, is also refreshing, along with the idea of our evil antagonist having its roots in the hobo culture of an earlier America.

On the down side, too many of the plot turns are predictable (the ending feels schematic) and there’s a certain carelessness with the movie’s own rules, culminating in a supposedly empty fuel tank failing to run out of petrol – a narrative crime on a par with a Chekhovian gun not being fired.

Verdict: I was never bored, and, although jump-scares can be pretty tedious, at least some of these did make me actually jump, and at just over 90 minutes Passenger gets us from A to B very nicely. 7/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com