Movie Review: Passengers (2008)

Although it is arguable what exactly is needed to have a successful thriller, there is one thing that seems pretty obvious: Thrills. A thriller can be a lot of things, but if the words "suspenseful" and "thrilling" are not used, chances are good the movie failed as a thriller. Passengers, starring Anne Hathaway and Patrick Wilson, falls into the trap of not living up to it's genre namesake. Passengers is contrived, easy to figure out, and worst of all, boring.

Claire Summers (Hathaway) is a counselor who has been in school her whole life, but has never had the chance to practice what she's been taught. After a horrific plane crash, however, Claire's boss (Andre Baugher) decides it's time that she get some real world experience and provide group counseling to the survivors of the crash.

Things get off to a rocky start almost immediately. Most of the survivors spend their time in therapy arguing about the events of the crash, while Eric (Wilson) refuses to go to group meetings and instead suggests that Claire make a "house call." It becomes apparent very quickly that Eric much more interest in Claire than he has in getting therapy.

Unfortunately, Passengers goes nowhere with the premise, and instead settles into contrived situations and fails to build any realistic tension. The characters are almost universally unbelievable (Claire will go along with anything as long as you ask twice) and the ending twists are pretty easy to see coming a mere 10 minutes into the movie.

I'm not completely sure the director knew what direction to go with the script. He implements false scare tactics (Hathaway had to do her best to appear scared as a newspaper blowing in the wind accidentally hits her) and an ending that feels like it's from a completely different movie. In fact, the last five minutes of the movie have more tension and emotion in them than the ninety minutes combined.

It's pretty easy to see why Passengers didn't generate much buzz in limited theater release. Of all the things it did wrong, the absolute worst was that it was flat-out boring. Thrillers can get by with a mediocre script and an implausible premise if it manages to keep the suspense level up. When they don't, however, they end up failing miserably.

Rating: 4/10