Passenger (2026 film)

Two friends, Daniel and Lucas, are driving down a dark road at night. Daniel is suddenly killed by an unseen attacker, and Lucas flees.

Elsewhere, couple Maddie and Tyler are on a road trip. They pull over on a residential street so that Tyler can propose to Maddie, which she accepts. When the two hit the road again at night, Lucas speeds ahead of their van frantically. Moments later, Maddie and Tyler pull over when they see Lucas’s car crashed against a tree. Lucas tries to crawl out of the passenger seat, but is pulled back inside and killed.

In the morning, the couple sees that their van has three claw marks, similar to the ones on Lucas’s car. At a gathering of other van-lifers, Maddie goes through the other tents and sees pictures of missing people, as well as a stick figure with three lines going through its body. She meets a woman named Diana Marsh and mentions stopping for a car accident the night before. Diana’s tone becomes ominous, as she warns Maddie not to stop on the road at night. Later that night, Maddie sees the mysterious figure.

Maddie looks at the dashcam footage of Lucas’s car before the crash and sees the figure sitting next to him in the car. Suddenly, the figure enters the van and tries to strangle Maddie with her seatbelt, but she burns its hand with a St. Christopher medallion. Maddie rushes out of the van and tells Tyler, but the figure has vanished.

Maddie learns there have been other incidents of travelers going missing after their vehicles have been seen with the claw marks. The figure that she saw is known as “the Passenger”, which haunts and kills travelers. During a screening of Roman Holiday, the Passenger attacks Tyler and Maddie, forcing them to flee. Maddie suggests to Tyler that they get to Flagstaff to find Diana, as she may know how to get rid of the Passenger. During the night, they narrowly escape another attack from the Passenger.

The couple buy medallions to hang around the van as they make it to Flagstaff, asking for Diana. She tells Maddie and Tyler that there was a rumor of a traveler who was haunted by the Passenger but sought refuge in the Church of St. Christopher, which is not on any map. The Passenger kills Diana, forcing the couple to flee. Maddie and Tyler follow a symbol on a billboard, avoiding tricks from the Passenger; Tyler is pulled out of the van. Maddie keeps driving until the Passenger is flung through the windshield. Maddie rams the van into the Passenger, impaling it on a statue and killing it. Tyler reunites with Maddie as emergency vehicles arrive.

• Jacob Scipio as Tyler
• Lou Llobell as Maddie, Tyler's fiancee
• Melissa Leo as Diana Marsh
• Joseph Lopez as "the Passenger", a demonic entity that begins stalking Tyler and Maddie.
• Miles Fowler as Lucas
• Alan Trong as Daniel

In October 2024, it was announced that André Øvredal would be directing a new horror film, with the script written by T.W. Burgess and Zachary Donohue, and produced by Walter Hamada and Gary Dauberman.^[7] In January 2025, Melissa Leo, Lou Llobell and Jacob Scipio joined the cast, with principal photography beginning that month.^[8] Christopher Young had composed the score.^[9]

Passenger was released in the United States by Paramount Pictures on May 22, 2026.^[10] It was originally scheduled for May 29, 2026, but was moved up a week to avoid competition with Backrooms and Scary Movie, another Paramount film.^[11]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 48% of 73 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "A stylish ride weighed down by the litany of clichés it picks up along the way, Passenger drives in circles but has some memorable bumps and jolts during the journey."^[12] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 52 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.^[13] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale.^[14]