Why So Blu?

Passenger (Blu-ray Review)

Passenger made me wanna keep driving and never look back. And it wasn’t because it was scary. Because it’s not. At all. This is director André Øvredal’s worst film by a mile. He usually is great at building dread with patience and precision, even in lesser entries in his filmography like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Which makes this limp supernatural road trip all the more disappointing.

 

 

 

Film ★★☆☆☆

This is the filmmaker who gave audiences the suffocating unease of The Autopsy of Jane Doe, the stormy gothic atmosphere of The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and yet Passenger feels like a movie assembled from rejected ideas left behind in the glove compartment of better horror films.

To its credit, the opening sequence almost fools you into thinking something worthwhile is ahead. Two friends cruise down a deserted highway at night before the film detonates into a genuinely effective title-card scare staged with real tension and visual control. For about five minutes, Øvredal tricks you into believing you’re seated for what might be an all-timer. 

Then the movie immediately swerves into a ditch of stale mythology, bargain-bin jump scares, and exposition so clunky it arrives with hazard lights. 

Maddie (Lou Llobell) and Tyler (Jacob Scipio), a Brooklyn couple testing out van life, stumble into the orbit of a demonic highway drifter after stopping at the site of a grisly crash. What should be a tale with endless dark roads occupied by a supernatural force riding shotgun, instead continuously stops dead to explain itself until every ounce of mystery leaks out onto the pavement.

The biggest obstacle is that Maddie and Tyler are astonishingly dull people to spend ninety-four minutes with. 

Tyler treats van life like a spiritual awakening ripped from a YouTube influencer channel, while Maddie spends most of the film looking one inconvenience away from demanding they go back to Brooklyn immediately. 

The screenplay tosses in minor morsels of backstory, like foster care trauma and some sort of family issues that don’t add anything or go anywhere. Bob Ross quotes are repeated as if writers T.W. Burgess and Zachary Donohue mistook it for quirky character texture. 

Llobell and Scipio try their best, and there’s at least some relief in watching horror protagonists who occasionally communicate like functioning adults instead of complete idiots, but the script gives them almost nothing to work with besides endless reaction shots and repetitive conversations about how weird things are getting. 

Melissa Leo shows up midway through the film as a weary van-life veteran, existing purely to dump exposition about “The Highwayman from Hell,” a supernatural stalker governed by rules so arbitrary they might as well have been written while waiting for the light to turn green. Passenger piles on lore with such frantic determination that the Passenger himself becomes less frightening the more he appears. What little menace he earned in the cold opening is all gone by the climax when he’s popping into frame screaming.

Øvredal occasionally flashes a level of craftsmanship that made previous work memorable. I liked a moment where Maddie nervously crosses a parking lot while the camera slowly rotates around, weaponizing empty space instead of noise. 

Also worth noting is a date night where Maddie and Tyler watch Roman Holiday on a projector, lighting up the woods while the Passenger lurks beyond Audrey Hepburn’s smiling face. It’s a sad reminder of what this film could have been. 

For a while, I was wondering if Passenger was PG-13. It’s pretty bloodless and barely and language. That is, until the end, when a neck snaps backward in a spray of blood and exposed tissue. While enjoyable, it feels imported from a much better film. 

Isolated moments of style can’t rescue a story trapped in an endless cycle of repetitive fake-outs and brain-dead decision making. Øvredal mistakes loudness for terror, hammering viewers with the same shrieking jump scares until it becomes numbing. 

And the climax arrives with such lazy convenience that the entire journey feels pointless. Even Øvredal got tired and decided to pull over early. Passenger spends its runtime spinning its wheels in place. The final eye-roll is Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” over the credits, the final bad decision on a trip full of them.

Video ★★★★★

Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1

Clarity/Detail: Although Passenger spends much of its runtime in darkness, the Blu-ray still resolves plenty of detail. Clothing, vehicles, wet foliage, falling rain, facial features, the orange RV’s exterior, and its cluttered interior remain easy to examine, while the brickwork visible as Maddie packs up the apartment is surprisingly well defined. Even the smaller objects scattered across the dashboard come through cleanly.

Depth: The nighttime photography has an impressive sense of space, with people standing apart naturally from the surrounding trees, cars, beaches, storefronts, and parking lots. Around 00:35, Maddie stands alone as the parking-lot lights switch on and off, creating striking separation between her, the distant businesses, and the different layers of illumination behind her. During the Roman Holiday sequence at roughly 00:51, the face pushing through the screen has a creepy dimensional quality, while a spear aimed toward the camera during the climax produces a brief but convincing 3D-like effect.

Black Levels: Since most of the movie unfolds at night, black performance matters, and this disc handles it remarkably well. Shadows are generally deep without swallowing important information, though there are a few small instances of crush, most noticeably around 01:24 inside the van, shortly before the Passenger throws Tyler out. The first partial look at the Passenger at approximately 00:23 is especially effective: Maddie peers toward the rear of the van as the figure remains buried in darkness, with the ambulance lights revealing only fragments of its face. It may be a standard Blu-ray, but its contrast can look surprisingly close to UHD at times.

Color Reproduction: The limited nighttime palette still has some strong bursts of color. Flashing red vehicle lights cut sharply through the surrounding darkness, and the birthday-party decorations Maddie notices across the street at about 00:14 display a pleasing assortment of brighter hues.

Flesh Tones: Complexions remain believable throughout. Even under the movie’s difficult nighttime lighting, faces retain a reasonably natural appearance.

Noise/Artifacts: This is an impressive Blu-ray. For the most part, the image remains stable and avoids the distracting compression noise, blocking, or other digital problems that can become obvious in dark material.

Audio ★★★★★

Audio Format(s): English Dolby Atmos; English Dolby TrueHD 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit); French Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1; Audio descriptive

Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Spanish

Dynamics: This is a lively, aggressive mix that gives a capable system plenty to work with. Quiet sounds in the woods are handled with enough restraint to build tension, while the climax opens everything up as the van crashes into the church amid falling statues, fire, terrified screams, and the demon’s roar. The jump from restrained atmosphere to outright chaos is forceful. I’d go so far to say this is a demo worthy Atmos mix.

Height: The opening attack provides an early vertical effect when Daniel is pulled from the car, with the sound rising as his body is lifted into the air. The moment gives the impression that the action is moving above the listener rather than remaining locked to ear level. During the climactic crash, you can hear debris falling from above.

Low Frequency Extension: The movie’s jump scares carry firm bass hits, and multiple subwoofers give jolts added weight while smoothing the response across the room. The standout arrives around 00:54, when the shaking van generates a heavy low-end rumble that can make the entire listening space feel unsettled.

Surround Sound Presentation: The track makes active use of the full room. Early on, a friend’s calls for “Daniel” move through the speakers along with the camera, while passing vehicles stretch naturally across the front and side channels. Car horns, including the one at approximately 00:19, travel through the soundstage with clear direction.

At about 00:36, the sound of someone running behind the listening position is startlingly convincing. Moments later, when Maddie unlocks the RV, its electronic chirp lands distinctly in the left speaker. The unexplained pounding outside the vehicle around 00:39 surrounds the audience and adds to the scene’s panic rather than merely increasing the volume.

The score also reaches beyond the front speakers during the more suspenseful passages, with the violins spreading around the room. During the Roman Holiday sequence at roughly 00:51, the Passenger’s footsteps are deliberately moved from channel to channel, making it seem as though the figure is circling the audience. A much smaller detail appears at 01:17, when the pendant hanging from the rearview mirror produces a faint jingle in the right speaker.

Dialogue Reproduction: Voices remain clean, intelligible, and firmly placed even when the music, vehicle effects, impacts, and supernatural activity become more aggressive.

Extras ☆☆☆☆☆

None

Summary ★★★☆☆

Passenger is sadly mediocre, but the blu-ray audio and video are outstanding, with the atmos mix being demo worthy. I’m sure one day a 4K will be released, but I honestly can’t imagine it being too much better than what’s offered here. There are no extras, so if you’re a fan, you might want to wait.