Hitchhiker horror…..
In fairness back in the day our Editor would often pick up hitchhikers which, though kind, always had a risk. Essentially a stranger whose background you never knew, maybe mentally unstable, maybe outspoken with disagreeable ill thought out views and possibly even prone to outbursts of violence and yet the hitchhikers still accepted a lift from our Editor (‘You’re fired!’ – Ed). The Passenger here is something of an urban legend, a demonic presence at the unlit, empty roadside that takes drivers as his victims. His M.O. is first seen in the opening scene that ends with a great jump scare.
The passenger….
It’s one of many jump scares throughout the film that centres on a young couple played by Lou Llobell and Jacob Scipio who pack up leaving the city to live on the road in their campervan and its whilst travelling at night they encounter the same car from the opening scene that overtakes them beeping furiously until they catch up with it further down the road where it has crashed to catastrophic and terminal effect for its driver. But noticing three distinct scratches on the back of the car Lou also catches sight of a pale faced man appearing and disappearing in the blinking light of their vans’ indicator. The Passenger has found them marked as his next victims.
But they’re not aware of it until they chat to Diana (Melisssa Leo) at a camper van layby who knows who realises who the figure is warning them to never drive at night and never stop for anyone. ‘People don’t take trips, trips take people’ Diane warns the couple as they are soon to find out. Combining the story of St Christopher, the patron saint of travellers, it also adds The Hobo Code, a depression era guide about various facets of life on the road. As Diane warns them ‘for everything Holy there’s something UnHoly’, a pitch for any filmmaker looking to make the Princess Catherine / Meghan Markle movie.
Pick up this film?
Directed by Andre Ovredal who has a pedigree in horror and here he has expertly constructed some quite brilliant jump scares one of the best being an extended set piece in a car park and just as effective is one where the couple use a portable projector to watch a film on a bedsheet they stretched between two trees in a forest.
The first two acts are full of scare that jolt the audience but succumbs to a run of the mill climatic third act which adheres to standard tropes. But despite that and a few contrivances along the way there’s a lot of scary fun along the road to that final destination.
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Here’s the Passenger trailer…
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