If ‘Passenger’ Has You Terrified of the Open Road, These Supernatural Horror Films Will Keep You Up All Night

‘Passenger,’ André Øvredal’s new supernatural horror film, lands in theaters on May 22, 2026, from Paramount Pictures, and the premise alone is enough to make any road tripper grip their steering wheel a little tighter.

After a young couple witnesses a gruesome highway accident, they soon realize they did not leave the crash scene alone, as a demonic presence called the Passenger won’t stop until it claims them both, turning their van life adventure into a waking nightmare.

The arrival of ‘Passenger’ signals something exciting for horror fans who love the specific dread of being trapped in a vehicle with nowhere to go. Øvredal, the filmmaker behind ‘The Autopsy of Jane Doe,’ ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,’ and ‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter,’ has called ‘Passenger’ his scariest movie yet, a statement that carries real weight given his track record. If the film has already burrowed under your skin, here are the titles you should queue up next.

The Rise of Supernatural Highway Horror

What all scary movies about road trips have in common is that they are about the fear of the unknown, which stands in contrast to films like ‘The Exorcist,’ ‘Halloween,’ and ‘Scream,’ where a demon or serial killer stalks a familiar suburb. The highway strips away every comfort and resource the protagonist might otherwise rely on, making that sense of inescapable pursuit all the more visceral.

The trailer for ‘Passenger’ begins with a cold open that recalls classic John Carpenter films like ‘In the Mouth of Madness,’ then accelerates into a full-blown, road-set nightmare brimming with scares and religious motifs. That deliberate callback to Carpenter signals that Øvredal is operating within a very specific horror tradition, one built on the terror of being pursued by something with no intention of stopping.

The filmmaker teased that the entity in ‘Passenger’ may evolve into new mythology, but that it is rooted in the familiar, with the goal of building a mythological character in the vein of other beloved genre icons. For fans looking to understand where that mythology draws from, the films below are your required reading.

Unstoppable Entity Horror Films Worth Your Time

‘It Follows’ is the most obvious companion piece to ‘Passenger’ and arguably the gold standard for this specific brand of fear. The 2014 film, written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, stars Maika Monroe as a young woman pursued by a supernatural entity after having a curse passed to her, a creature that takes on any humanoid form and tracks its prey no matter the distance they go to escape.

On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 95% approval rating, with the critical consensus describing it as smart, original, and above all terrifying, ranking it as the ninth-most-praised horror film of the 2010s.

‘Smile,’ released in 2022, introduces the concept of an evil entity that feeds off trauma, as therapist Rose Cotter watches a patient die horribly and finds herself afflicted with the same sinister presence. Like ‘Passenger,’ the horror in ‘Smile’ is rooted in the idea that the threat has already latched onto its victim, and that no amount of running or clever planning will simply make it go away.

Director Parker Finn doubles the fear and quality in the sequel ‘Smile 2,’ which turns its focus to pop star Skye Riley, played by Naomi Scott, as she struggles to determine what is real while the entity proves it has no sense of humor whatsoever.

Demonic Road Trip Movies That Defined the Genre

‘Jeepers Creepers’ understood the demon-on-the-highway formula before most modern horror writers had even considered it. The film follows siblings Trish and Darry Jenner as their routine road trip home from college descends into terror, transforming into a race against time to escape a relentless supernatural creature that awakens every 23 years to feast on human flesh.

It is exactly the kind of open-road nightmare that ‘Passenger’ channels, where the horror attaches itself to ordinary people doing something as mundane as driving home.

‘Southbound’ centers around the idea of a demon-haunted southwestern road trip with no destination in sight, only fleeing personal and literal demons, and it celebrates the weird of the desert by turning transitory spaces like gas stations into pitstops for the supernatural. The anthology format keeps the dread rotating through different characters and scenarios, never allowing the audience to settle, and the cumulative effect is deeply unsettling.

The score for ‘Passenger’ was provided by legendary horror and thriller composer Christopher Young, whose credits include ‘Hellraiser,’ ‘Drag Me to Hell,’ ‘Sinister,’ and ‘Pet Sematary.’ That pedigree is a clear indicator of the tonal register Øvredal is aiming for, and fans of those films will find familiar sonic and atmospheric DNA woven throughout this new entry.

Van Life Horror and the Classic Road Stalker

No conversation about highway horror is complete without acknowledging the foundational texts. Steven Spielberg’s directorial debut, ‘Duel,’ starred Dennis Weaver as a salesman who ends up on the wrong end of a tanker truck’s rage, with the unknown driver following him to various truck stops and tormenting him on the road, nearly causing his death a number of times.

The film touches on fears of road rage that nearly every driver has seen or experienced, as well as the inability to escape someone on the road who may be following you at every turn.

‘Joy Ride’ took the Spielberg formula into the early 2000s and gave it a cruel, playful twist. Three friends are taking a road trip home for summer break, they play a prank and it goes profoundly wrong, and they spend the rest of their trip in fear that their unknown stalker will catch up with them. Co-written by J.J. Abrams and featuring a voice-only performance from Ted Levine as villain Rusty Nail, it is widely considered a real grungy pleasure cut from the same cloth as ‘Duel,’ ‘Breakdown,’ and ‘The Hitcher.’

‘The Hitcher’ from 1986 remains the coldest and most psychologically disturbing of the bunch. A young man who escaped the clutches of a murderous hitchhiker is subsequently stalked, framed for the hitcher’s crimes, and has his life made into a living hell by the same man he thought he’d left behind on the road.

There is no logic, no motive, and no mercy in the film’s villain, which is precisely what makes him so deeply uncomfortable to watch and so relevant as a cinematic ancestor to the demon now haunting the highways of ‘Passenger.’

Øvredal has stated that seeing the audience jump and engage during test screenings has left him very happy with ‘Passenger,’ and that some of the best moments in the film are not even in the trailer.

If that kind of director confidence combined with a monstrous mythological entity sounds like everything you have been waiting for, the films above will keep you company in the dark until you can make it to the cinema. Once you have seen ‘Passenger,’ we would love to know which movie on this list came closest to hitting the same nerve.