Passenger review – generic jumpscare horror offers bumpy journey to nowhere

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A demonic entity attaches itself to travellers on the road in this competently directed but hopelessly indistinctive scare-free misfire As Obsession , a micro-budget horror made by a YouTuber , continues to overperform with critics and audiences, and as another twentysomething content creator prepares to break a potential record with the release of Backrooms , here comes a stodgy by-the-book Paramount horror that feels like someone’s embarrassing dad just gatecrashed a college party. While others might be trying to innovate, those involved with Paramount’s generic schedule-filler Passenger are perfectly content to keep things lazily trucking along as they always have. Even if it wasn’t stuck in an unfortunate gen Z genre sandwich, it would still be a struggle to see why anyone would want to hitch a ride with this one. Like February’s cursed misfire Psycho Killer , another junky on-the-road studio horror, Passenger plays like something that would have gone straight to unrated DVD back ...
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Is eco-terrorism now self-defence? Inside explosive film How to Blow Up a Pipeline

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Peaceful protest hasn’t stopped the climate crisis, so what should happen next? The makers of a new nerve-jangling film about eight young saboteurs talk about oil, extreme action and morality

In the baking heat of the west Texas desert, a young man is making a bomb. Hands trembling, sweat fogging his goggles, he slowly assembles the explosive. A knife-blade of powder is painstakingly poured into a tiny tube. Wires are shakily glued together. With infinite care, the delicate, deadly contraption takes shape. Outside the tin shack where this is all unfolding, another young man paces, remembering his friend’s instructions: “Don’t come in unless I tell you to. Unless you see fire.” He looks as if he’s about to be sick. The audience knows how he feels.

This is the tense setup at the heart of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, a propulsive, nerve-jangling thriller about eight young people who want to send a message about the urgency of the climate crisis by sabotaging an oil pipeline. The film takes its cues from its heroes: aiming to excite audiences into action instead of hectoring them into submission. It is one hell of a ride. After its premiere at Toronto last year, the New York Times pronounced How to Blow Up a Pipeline “a cultural landmark” for its sympathetic take on eco-terrorism, while the Washington City Paper described its youthful cast as “a much more intense, combustible version of The Breakfast Club”.

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