PASSENGER

Here is the hard part of this one. PASSENGER is a genuinely well-made horror movie, and it carries a stronger Christian premise than almost any horror film Hollywood has released lately. Its heroes fend off a demonic villain with a St. Christopher medal and a prayer, and they find refuge on the "holy ground" of a desert church. On its ideas, this is one of the more redemptive scary movies you'll come across.

But the movie is marred, and that word is the source's own. More than 25 obscenities, including roughly 16 "f" words, run through it. The violence is extreme — a body thrown through a windshield, a head split in half. There's implied fornication, and the couple's faith never rises above the medal and the church that protect them.

So here is our answer: skip it. The craft is real and the premise is admirable, but the content costs more than the merit returns. This is one you can admire from a distance and still leave unwatched.

A young engaged couple, Maddie and Tyler, leave New York City to chase Tyler's dream: touring the United States in a shiny new RV, far from the bickering he grew up with.

On a lonely country road, they witness a gruesome car accident and stop to help. That good deed marks them. Soon Maddie notices three claw marks — first on the wrecked car, then on their own RV — and a shadowy figure begins stalking her. Online, she finds the name locals give the thing that hunts travelers on this stretch of road: The Passenger. It refuses to stop until they're dead. Can they survive?

Three stars, and the fear is the reason. Director André Øvredal builds real dread out of a simple premise: the couple never know when or how the villain will strike, and that uncertainty keeps the tension taut. A creepy face appearing out of nowhere, an RV shaken by unseen hands, a shadow that stalks and grabs — the scares land, and the filmmaking around them is solid.

The movie also earns points for what most horror won't touch: it lets faith objects actually work, and it means it. That conviction gives the frights a spine most genre films lack.

What's here is a competent, frightening picture — good enough to make the wasted potential of its excessive language sting.

PASSENGER is unusually friendly to Christian ideas for a Hollywood horror movie. The demonic villain is real evil, and the film treats it that way. The heroes' defense is a St. Christopher medal engraved with a traveler's prayer — St. Christopher being the patron saint of travelers — and it burns the entity's hand when it tries to strangle Maddie. Their final hope is sanctuary at an old desert church, whose surrounding ground a woman named Diane calls "holy ground." That a mainstream studio film locates safety in a church and a prayer is worth naming.

But the picture is also marred by pagan and occult superstition, and its faith stops at objects and places. Maddie and Tyler have no living faith to ground them — only what the medal, the prayer, and the idea of the church as sanctuary teach them across the story. The couple are also engaged rather than married, living together, with a scene of implied fornication before the film begins.

So it's a movie that reaches toward the right refuge without quite reaching the One who fills it. A medal and a churchyard point to something true: that safety is found in the living God, not a talisman. "The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe" (Proverbs 18:10).

There's something almost admirable here: a well-made scare with a St. Christopher medal, a prayer, and a church standing between the heroes and real evil. But more than 25 obscenities and gruesome, head-splitting violence swallow the good it reaches for. So our answer stands: skip it. Looking for something the whole family can enjoy instead? Try our latest family-friendly picks.