Product: Passengers (2008)
Rating: 2.0
too little horror -- too much New Age spiritual mush
Based on PASSENGER's marketing, I was hoping for a scary supernatural tale. Instead, this was a case of too little "horror," too late.Indeed, not so much horror as squishy, New Age mush.If you like spiritual pseudo-horror like THE FORGOTTEN or DRAGONFLY, you might enjoy PASSENGERS, since it's the same old, same old (with borrowings from THE SIXTH SENSE, THE OTHERS, GHOST, JACOB'S LADDER, and the original TWILIGHT ZONE TV series).This is not really a spoiler, since the marketing (e.g. DVD box blurbs) kinda give away the premise...Passengers survive a plane crash, but then begin vanishing. Like that TWILIGHT ZONE episode about astronauts who survive a mishap in space, but when they return to Earth, they begin vanishing... Something they had encountered "up there" didn't mean for them to return, and is correcting its mistake.PASSENGERS had scary potential. Why are surviving passengers vanishing? What's being "corrected"? A rip in space/time? Some Supernatural Order (e.g., FINAL DESTINATION)?No, instead PASSENGERS borrows the more familiar explanation, found in THE SIXTH SENSE, JACOB'S LADDER, GHOST, and THE OTHERS. If you know those "twist" endings, you'll guess early on what PASSENGERS is about.PASSENGERS is slow and boring. We're nearly TWO THIRDS into the film before it gets ominous. A horror film should be ominous 10 to 15 minutes in, then get scarier. Instead, PASSENGERS's "horror" starts late and remains tepid.In its final 10 minutes, the film shifts from weak horror to "feel good" New Age spirituality.Horror fans will be disappointed.