‘Passenger’ Shifts to May 22, Clearing ‘The Backrooms’

André Ovredal, who has yet to disappoint us horror fans, is returning with a new genre film, Passenger, which Paramount Pictures will now release on May 22, 2026, one week earlier than originally expected.

The new date moves it away from The Backrooms (May 29), which is expected to break records if Iron Lung is any indication. It also gives the film a long Memorial Day weekend to generate revenue. Passenger is one of Paramount’s smaller titles and will likely move to streaming fairly quickly unless it becomes a surprise box office success. That outcome is possible, given the strong reactions to the theater-only trailer.

The studio began building hype with the trailer playing ahead of Primate and also Scream 7, both of which have drawn strong crowd reactions from my own experience.

The trailer eventually leaked online, giving us a taste of the horrors coming in Passenger, which follows a couple on “van life” who witness a horrific accident; afterward, they’re pursued by a demonic force that won’t let them escape.

The trailer plays out like a single scene, culminating in a wonderful jump scare that evokes John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness. It’s a really potent piece of footage, and the crowd ate it up, both times.

Passenger stars Jacob Scipio (Bad Boys for Life, The Outpost, and Without Remorse), Lou Llobell, and Melissa Leo (The Fighter).

“A few weeks into their van life adventure, a young couple witnesses a horrific accident that leaves the driver dead. Soon they’re being pursued by a demonic stalker who’s impossible to outrun and follows them wherever they go.”

Ovredal became a horror name with his 2010 found footage Trollhunter and the classic The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016), and would go on to direct two criminally underrated horror films: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019) and The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023).