Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on October 25, 2008, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
This is not so much a review as a public service announcement. The trailer for Passengers, which was all over the web recently if not so visible in theaters, suggests that this film (which sneaked onto 100 or so screens with no advance previews) is some sort of paranormal horror/drama, but don’t be fooled.
That coming attraction set up the movie as a kind of cross between The Sixth Sense and Final Destination, but instead, widescreen lensing notwithstanding, it plays like something that escaped from the Lifetime channel. While it is indeed about the aftermath of a horrible plane crash and hints at the ghostly here and there, it’s more concerned with half-hearted personal drama and a heatless romance. The disconnect between the trailer and Passengers itself suggests one of those gag previews that have hit the net recently, reconfiguring The Shining as a heartwarming father-and-son tale or West Side Story as a zombie flick.
Anne Hathaway, who can’t be pleased that this unworthy vehicle is popping up so soon after her acclaimed turn in Rachel Getting Married, plays Claire, a grief counselor assigned to help the handful of survivors of an airliner disaster through their trauma. One of the group is Eric (Patrick Wilson), who sees no need to attend their meetings but is interested in hanging out with Claire anyway—and since they’re first introduced while Eric is sitting nude on a hospital bed, you know that Claire’s early resistance will be broken down sooner rather than later. Concerns about professional misconduct aren’t the only things troubling her, though; a strange man starts playing peeping tom at her therapy sessions and elsewhere, while some of the group suddenly stop showing up. Claire begins to believe that some sort of conspiracy is afoot, and the feeling only gets stronger as she has run-ins with an airline official (David Morse) who’s evasive at best and hostile at worst.
Ronnie Christensen’s script has the seeds of a workable psychological thriller, and clearly the material was initially attractive to a solid cast. The first reel is like a game of Spot the Familiar Face, as in addition to Morse, Andre Braugher, Clea DuVall and Dianne Wiest also turn up (with The X Files’ William B. Davis skulking in the background once or twice). Their roles aren’t much more than functional, though, and the burgeoning relationship between Claire and Eric develops through banal situations and dialogue. It’s hard to imagine two more attractive co-stars for a story like this, which makes it especially disappointing that there’s no charge to their scenes together.
But then, there’s little energy to any of the proceedings under Rodrigo Garcia’s direction. The Colombian-born filmmaker has won praise for his previous multicharacter dramas like Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her, but his affectless presentation of events suggests he was trying to create a “subtle” suspenser to the point where all the tension has been leached out. A measured approach to filmmaking is one thing, but Garcia’s work here makes M. Night Shyamalan look like Michael Bay. And the rare occasions in which he does try to give the audience a jump are more awkward than scary, particularly in a laughable moment where Claire is startled to hysterics by a windblown newspaper.
Passengers finally gets it together in the last 10 minutes, when all is explained, a key event is fully dramatized and the meaning of all the previous plot strands comes into focus. While this does shed new light on moments that didn’t make sense before, it’s hardly enough to make one want to go back and revisit the movie on DVD—an opportunity that, nonetheless, will likely present itself very, very soon.
