Horror is currently ruling the box office, with the genre having one of its most explosive years to date. The seventh Scream was received negatively but gained big at the box office, and two films directed by creators on YouTube have taken the world by storm. Obsession and Backrooms have proven that original properties that can still make money, and there is room to invest in new talent that come from the modern day of online storytelling. With all the conversation about these films, I wanted to highlight and talk about two films made by long-running horror creators, by looking at Passenger and Scary Movie, mixing a conversation about an original property and the return to a legacy franchise. Scary Movie will easily be a big movie this summer, even with its low-critic score, but Passenger has truly fell under the radar, and maybe for good reason.
Passenger
Passenger was marketed easily by the word of mouth coming from its excellent trailer shown in front of various horror films in the last couple of months. The trailer treated itself as a short film, following two friends driving home as one stop and after leaving the car, loses the other. It is a fight for survival as the remaining driver attempts to drive home but runs into a supernatural entity, which ends with a dramatic jumpscare. Once the trailer hit the internet, it could be seen that there was more to the film, with that opening only being half of the full-length trailer. The rest of the trailer showcased what the film was, a drama between a soon-to-be married couple as they are chased by a supernatural creature which inhabits their car. The dramatic and intense prior sequence is only the opening of the film and is easily the best moment of the entire film. It is ruined slightly by the fact that the entire sequence was the trailer, there is nothing else added that was cut around in the trailers, but it’s the only time the film feels tense, or that it has any weight.
The film is directed by Andre Ovredal, a talented horror director who has given such tension-filled films such as Scary Stories to tell in the Dark, found footage feature Trollhunter and The Autopsy of Jane Doe. The Norwegian director is talented and makes the use of creatures so perfectly, but all that passion seems lost here. The film, as punny as it sounds, seems like it moves on autopilot, with aimless story which is connected by various jumpscares from a demon who looks like a wish version of Sinister villain Bughuul. There is no sense of danger when the demon is also only attached to our main character, this is an escalation of films like Paranormal Activity. Once demons were contained in homes, and now they are attached to cars and highways, and instead of doing anything interesting with this concept, the film just plays the moments you would expect from a haunting movie like this. The body count is low, and is essentially completely bloodless, with the film lacking any sort of tense sequence, none of the film is remotely memorable. The direction is also just incredibly murky and dark, the modern colour grading problem for horror features is all over this film, and when most of the film takes place at night, that is a true problem.
It is a shame when your film peaks in its very opening sequence, but the film can never match the pure adrenaline thrill the film opens with. The two leads are capable, and Jacob Scipo and Lou Llobell do share some solid chemistry, but their marital spout seems unnecessary when it is not fleshed out at all. There is an exploration seemingly into co-dependency, as Llobell’s character feels like her life has been upended by her fiancee’s decision to live life on the road, but the conversation only comes up once the horror begins, and is dropped soon after, it is not real drama. The movie cannot even get its own rules right for its main villain, a villain who is confined to many limitations to keep our characters alive, but when it comes to any characters outside of the core couple, the villain breaks his rules easily. Cliches really bring down this film, and how sloppy the screenwriting is, as it relies on falling back on those tropes to create a simple and unmemorable film, rather than delivering the scares you would want. Problems like this is easily showing the reason why this horror slipped through the cracks, and has been overshined by Obsession, the film that released the same week as it. At the end of the day, you will just forget seeing this a day after watching.
Scary Movie
The news that the Wayans brothers were returning to craft another Scary Movie, after leaving the franchise after the second entry, was big for fans of horror. The initial Scary Movie duology is beloved as a horror-comedy, spoofing on various horror properties, with the initial film being a spoof of both Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. 25 years after the second film, the sixth film in the franchise returns to its root, as a spoof of legacy sequels and specifically Scream 5 and 6, with Anna Farris and Regina Hall returning to the franchise alongside the returning Wayans also playing their characters from the first film. This newest entry has been marketed mainly for its offensive humour and its focus on spoofing your favourite modern horror properties, but the film is easily the tamest movie in the franchise. There are a couple of jokes presented against a transgender and a homosexual character, but nothing particularly bad that you would have assumed from the trailers. Many of the material shown in the trailers have also just been completely stripped from the film, cutting the film down to a lean 90-minutes.
It has been revealed by the Wayans themselves that they were still shooting material for reshoots earlier this year to keep up to date with the movies they were spoofing. This has led to sequences involving K Pop Demon Hunters, One Battle After Another and Michael Jackson, various sequences that do not fit the overall film but do prove to be memorable sequences. One of the biggest problems with the entire film is that many of the jokes do not feel like jokes, many jokes are just recreating sequences from other films, like a sequence where they recreate Weapons, or recreate Terrifer, bur where is the joke when the whole thing is just a reference. Outside of these the jokes have a common ratio of good to bad, with the Wayans shooting so many jokes at the screen at once that you are bound to get one golden gem after every couple wasted attempts. Some of the jokes also feel incredibly outdated already, making jokes about January 6th and COVID-19 still makes this film feel like it will run out of its timeless quality that the other films had on release.
It is strange how much the film plays it safe with its narrative structure, essentially playing the hits of a legacy sequel more than making fun of them. Scream 5 acts as the base and it just plays those scenes out one by one itself, with some cutaways to other film spoofs. The ending is when the film truly comes alive, with a comedically charged Ghostface reveal which plays into the legacy sequel conversation better than the most recent Scream entry. The new cast introduced in the film are mostly a dud, especially when the marketing has hinged solely on the returning actors that made the first two features so memorable. Anna Farris, Regina Hall and Shawn Wayans get very little to do across this film, with Farris herself, who should have been the protagonist, disappearing from the movie in the second act. Marlon Wayans is the one who gets the most to do across the film, and his character is going to test some audiences love of the character. There is a little too much of his character, Shawty, in the movie, a character who was conveyed as the comedic relief in the first movie and updating him to lead does no wonders. This is a movie designed to appeal to fans of the original and the franchise overall, nothing here will make you a fan if you were not already, it is more of the same. It is a lot more toned down, and sloppier in its comedy and in its depiction as a spoof, but fans of the franchise will probably still get a kick out of this one.
Rhys Reviews 
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