Passenger writer Zachary Donohue talks real-life highway terrors, smart characters, and that unforgettable ending in this interview.
WARNING: SPOILERS FOR PASSENGER AHEAD
After a young couple witnesses a gruesome highway accident, they soon realize they did not leave the crash scene alone. A demonic presence known as “The Passenger” latches onto them, initiating a relentless, high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse down pitch-black back roads. The entity will not stop until it claims them both, transforming a romantic road trip into a claustrophobic fight for survival.
Mama’s Geeky correspondent Rachel Tolleson sat down with Passenger writer Zachary Donohue to discuss the real-life roadside terrors that inspired the script, breaking traditional horror tropes by featuring a couple that actually communicates, and the logistics of executing a cosmic, van-versus-demon finale.
Zachary Donohue Talks Passenger
Mama’s Geeky: What was the process of coming up with this idea and bringing it to the page?
Zachary Donohue: I’ve been thinking about roads for a long time just because I grew up in upstate New York that it’s just all back roads. So you couldn’t go anywhere at night without taking some creepy back road and you kind of get used to it. But then occasionally you’ll just see something like really weird and off putting. And, you know, that in itself was part of it. But then when I was really young, my mom and I were driving on a back road and the car broke down. And this is like, you know, before cell phones and, you know, iPhones. And so we hitchhiked. And I’m like seven years old and just very scared to have been, you know, kind of germinating on ideas of wanting to set a road horror movie. And, you know, obviously, I’m a big fan of, you know, Joyride and Breakdown and just all these great like thrillers and taking place on there. So, yeah, I was just kind of wanting to tell this story that was sort of a relentless pedal to the metal nonstop. You know, you’re just being chased by a demon. And that’s it’s simple and sweet.
Mama’s Geeky: The lead couple actually communicates well, which is rare for horror movies. What inspired you to make them so relatable and smart?
Zachary Donohue: I mean, it’s just a reaction to, you know, you see a lot of like people kind of I guess, you know, pick that apart of other movies, right? That you see that complaint and you’re like, okay, well, you know, audiences are wanting, you know, smart characters who communicate. So it was a lot of just trying to, you know, make them as relatable and believable, you know, in horror movies like these, you there’s like a period in like the 30 minute to like 40 minute mark where sometimes it’s good to have one character, you know, experiencing the horror before the other. So we tried to, you know, just kind of condense that period where Tyler’s not quite on the same page as her. We tried to keep that as tight as possible so that there’s still a little bit of fun to be had with just experiencing the horror through one character, you know?
Mama’s Geeky: The scares are incredibly dynamic rather than relying on annoying jump scares. What was your mindset when writing them out?
Zachary Donohue: Thank you. I mean, that’s a big testament to Andre’s directing and his DP Feday’s brilliant camera work. But yeah, we spent a lot of time. My co-writer and I, Tom, spent a lot of time crafting these, you know, very, you know, kind of detailed beat by beat scares that well, first, we you know, there’s in a car movie, we’ve seen so many, like, especially like a car horror movie, we’ve seen so many different versions of like, he’s in the back seat, he’s in the rear view, you know, the rear view mirror or, you know, so it was trying to come up with, like scare set pieces that, you know, were like slightly fresh for the concept. So like, you know, there’s that one scene in Tyler makes the projector of Roman Holiday. That was like a spin on like, if they went to a, like a drive-in movie theater, right? Like that. So, so, you know, from there, it was like, how do we make these like, really long, kind of like dynamic, like rollercoaster sequences. So it’s like, you know, it’s not just a scare where it’s like, you hear a creepy noise, you walk down the hall, you turn around, and like, there’s no one there, but then the camera turns and like, there’s a ghost behind you. Yeah, yeah, we wanted to like, really have like a lot of like, you know, like little stops and starts in those kind of big set pieces that kind of keep you like wondering, like, where it’s going to hit or it hits and then you’re like, okay, the scene’s done. But then it keeps going a little bit, you know?
Mama’s Geeky: Can you talk about crafting the demise of the entity in that wild third-act church scene?
Zachary Donohue: Uh, this is another great question. Um, you know, uh, we, from the very beginning, we’re, we’re toying with, well, we introduced the idea that, you know, he’s Jacob, the actor, Tyler, the character is driving with a St. Christopher medallion, which, which a lot of people, uh, you know, have in their cars and Christopher is the patron saint of travelers. And this, uh, you know, the passenger is a demon. So it kind of made sense on a, just a thematic level to connect the two. Um, so that, you know, they’re both opposites of, you know, the, the holy and unholy spectrum. And so when we, you know, when we were crafting ideas of like, well, how does she, you know, when the, cause we ultimately, we wanted it to be a happy ending, we wanted her to defeat the evil. And so in very early drafts, we were like, well, she’s not an exorcist. So she has no exorcism abilities, you know, so the, the, the things that, you know, you would do to defeat a demon creatively are kind of, you know, uh, there’s just like a small number of, of options. And then we came up with this idea of the St. Christopher church. And then we were like, you know what, let’s just have fun. And she kills him with the van. The van is a character in the movie. Yeah. She should be using that. The thing that she’s been afraid of the whole movie uses, she weaponizes it and puts him into St. Christopher. Um, so, you know, it’s, it’s a big kind of, uh, cosmic ending, uh, that I, I think it’s, I think it’s super fun.
Want to know more about the family cameo hidden in the movie’s props, the secrets behind the one-er parking lot sequence, and how the hashtag van life community shaped the script? Check out our full video interview with Zachary Donohue.
Passenger is haunting theaters everywhere right now – be sure to grab your tickets, gather your friends, and experience the ride on the biggest screen possible.
