Why I took it off the list:

While researching psychological thriller The Passenger (2023), I realized there was a Spanish film with the same name (La Pasajera in Spanish) that released the previous year.

Reading a little more about it, I realized this Passenger was more of a horror comedy and premiered at the Sitges Film Festival, so had the potential to be entertaining at least.

So, let’s dig in!

Review of La Pasajera (2021)

La Pasajera opens on a foggy, woodland road at night with a couple of lost backpacking tourists (who are speaking rather poor broken English). A mysterious female figure suddenly emerges from the fog.

She seemingly teleports right at them, and we see she’s bleeding heavily and convulsing. When the male hiker steps towards her, she viciously attacks him. We then cut right to the title card, accompanied by a sudden jump to jaunty, upbeat matador music.

This indicates right from the start that this film isn’t exactly going to take itself seriously, which it goes on to continuously prove throughout the runtime.

The main source of comedy is the mismatched music, and the main protagonist, Blasco, a macho, motormouth, middle-aged ex-bullfighter who’s also a conspiracy theorist. Your mileage for the film may depend on your tolerance of the sense of humor of this rather obnoxious, cartoonish character.

After the titles, we cut to a montage of a man lovingly cleaning the exterior of a beat-up pest control van. It turns out Blasco is operating it as a kind of ride-share, picking up random strangers on a ride across the Spanish countryside.

Flimsy Plot

Aside from Blasco, the group of van occupants includes 3 female passengers: Mariela, a fervently religious Mexican, Lidia, an uptight upper-class woman, and Marta, Lidia’s surly teenage daughter. The first part of the film is mostly concerned with the bickering of the mismatched passengers.

However, they soon come across something strange in the middle of the woods: what appears to be a mini-crashed spaceship, along with alien-looking goo, which Marta unwisely touches. Freaked out, they get on their way, but Marta appears to be infected with something.

What’s more, they then inadvertently crash into the female backpacker from the first scene, who’s also seriously infected. They unwisely decide to bring her into the van to get her to a hospital. And, predictably, she soon infects other passengers with whatever otherworldly virus she’s carrying.

And that’s about the gist of the basic setup. After the infected woman attacks, it turns into more of a typical stalk-and-slash as the survivors abandon the van and run into the woods with the body-snatcher-zombie-thing in hot pursuit.

Not as Funny or Emotional as it Thinks

La Pasajera attempts to work as a kind of possession horror, but fails to establish any emotional connection with the thinly-sketched characters that would make us fear for their safety. Despite some serious moments, the overall tone remains jokey, and the film is more concerned with dishing out snappy one-liners than portraying realistic reactions to the situation.

It all climaxes with a ridiculous showdown and the conclusion is way too stretched out: it feels like there are like 3 or 4 different endings before it abruptly, finally finishes with a cliffhanger.

Saying all that, the film has some decent creature and gore effects. It also looks well-lit and shot on an obviously low budget, with some inventive camera work that keeps the action in the tight space of the van fresh and engaging.

Final score: 5/10

La Pasajera (2021): Worth Watching?

It depends, La Pasajera might appeal to you if you’re looking for some lightweight, undemanding genre fare to pass an evening. It’s fitfully amusing, but the tone is a bit all over the place. It’s never scary, and the comedy doesn’t land as much as it would like.