The blurb for The Passenger – or La pasajera, to give it its original title – doesn’t give too much away; going from this to an opening scene which seems to point to a different genre of horror altogether, the film we actually get turns out to be quite a pleasant, unpleasant surprise. The Passenger could be best described as a creature feature road trip, darkly funny and overblown, and tailor-made to be a diverting Saturday night film – which is of course intended to be a compliment.
Although we start by picking through some potentially offputting genre staples – lost hitchhikers in the woods, creepy mist, creepy ghostly (?) woman hightailing it out of said mist – this is brief, and we’re quickly whisked off elsewhere, with more than a few signals that none of this it to be taken too seriously. Somewhere in rural Spain, we meet Carlos Blasco (Ramiro Blas), a driver who ekes out a living by hiring out his ‘vintage’ van – it’s not quite a taxi, and it’s not quite an independent hire, as he’s along for the ride.
On this occasion, he’s due to drive three women – a religious type, and a career woman dropping off her unimpressed teenage daughter at her father’s – and it’s soon clear that Blasco is clearly a comedy of errors kind of a guy, a fact which doesn’t really endear him to his right-minded passengers. He seems well meaning, but he tends to say the wrong things, particularly where women are concerned: for all that, he’s warm and likeable: this could be the wrong impression, but it doesn’t feel like we’re intended to oppose him or dislike him. He quickly forms an odd friendship with the teenager, Marta (Paula Gallego), too, which draws her away from being the surly teenager she first appears to be.
The awkward journey continues, but when it goes from bad to worse, it really goes from bad to worse.
Noticing something at the roadside, they pull over and Marta finds herself investigating what looks clearly like the kind of space debris which can only lead to dreadful, splattery consequences for the people that discover it. They get back into the bus and a squabble soon ensues, but there’s more: the bus then seems to hit someone, a woman stood out in the darkness of the road. The women on the bus insist that they go back and help this person, but there’s something …not quite right about them, even before they’re dragged onto the bus. The set-up is complete then, and things are about to get very weird (this also casts a different light on what seemed to be a ghostly figure in the early reels; oh no, it ain’t).
That’s enough with the plot summary: the important thing is that what ensues is a fairly ambitious, rather enjoyable mash-up of different genre elements. There is a lot if accompanying dialogue, sure, but no justifiable way to say that things get boring. It has the fun, OTT feel of something like Night of the Creeps, but the road trip element is an engaging development, as it’s usually associated with Hitcher-style threats – very definitely human, even if oddly powerful or knowledgeable to the point of seeming a bit supernatural. Well, whatever is involved here, it pays dividends in terms of horrible ‘ick’ body horror. One slight issue is that not all of the Spanish cultural references fully land; some expressions go untranslated, for example, which might not be hugely significant, but it’s a shame to feel like you’re potentially missing something. But hey. Along the way, we also get decent characters and good performances which really hold things together. The unlikely due of Marta and Blasco is genuinely charming, and – come what may – Blasco is great, so it would be great to see him on screen again. Perhaps we will. Perhaps we will.
The Passenger will be released in cinemas on June 3rd 2022 and on VOD/DVD on June 28th.