Every André Øvredal Film Ranked By Fear Factor (Including Passenger)
Norwegian director André Øvredal has carved out a reputation as a horror director, with five out of six projects being part of the genre.
Ever since his debut solo feature film, Troll Hunter, Øvredal has seemingly delighted in scaring audiences out of their minds. His latest attempt to frighten us all comes with 2026’s Passenger.
Set primarily within the confines of a car, Passenger joins a young couple whose road trip is interrupted by the arrival of a demonic presence. The premise certainly sounds spooky enough, but where does it fit within the solo directorial projects of André Øvredal?
After being very brave, and incurring only a couple of sleepless nights, we’ve gone back through Øvredal’s filmography, ranking each film based on its fear factor. Read on to see how Passenger fared.
When it comes to ranking André Øvredal projects in terms of their fright factor, Mortal is an easy choice to come last. The primary reason for this is that Mortal is the only solo project from Øvredal that isn’t a horror film.
In 2020 the director decided to take a step back from his trademark horrors to create this fantasy adventure story. Starring Nat Wolff, Mortal is based on the Norse legend of Thor’s hammer and finds a young man discovering his god-like powers. A film more in keeping with the Percy Jackson series – only with more violence – Mortal is strong on fantasy elements, but light on scares.
After what felt like several thousand years, The Last Voyage of the Demeter finally arrived on UK shores. Being one of those films that was, for some inexplicable reason, released months after its debut in the US, The Last Voyage of the Demeter struggled to find an audience. Considering that the film is focused on the popular section of Bram Stoker’s novel in which Count Dracula travels from Transylvania to Whitby, it is criminal that the film hasn’t had more success.
The scale of the budget points to hopes that this might have been a cinema smash, but sadly that was not meant to be. A film that is suitably Gothic, with some great moments of the ship’s crew being stalked and picked off in the darkness, Voyage of the Demeter has plenty of blockbuster movie friendly scares, sans the blockbuster box-office.
Adapted from the children’s book series, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is an anthology horror that tells a series of interconnected tales. Set in the fictional town of Mill Valley on Halloween in 1968, Øvredal tackled some fan favourite stories from the book.
Unlike his other films, which have targeted a much older audience, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark set its sights on the younger Goosebumps-loving crowd. Don’t let its 12A certificate fool you though, as André Øvredal pushes the horror as far as the rating allows. In doing so he has created a wickedly-toned gateway horror for the new generation, while still including several elements to put hardened horror fans on edge. One such scene brings to life the spider bite urban legend as a pimple explodes, releasing hundreds of spiders everywhere.
Troll Hunter was André Øvredal’s first solo credit as a director. By pushing out on his own, Øvredal was able to demonstrate the full breadth of his potential; Troll Hunter is brilliant. Considered by many to be one of the best found-footage horrors, Troll Hunter joins a team of students as they document an investigation into a series of bear killings.
Their work sees them cross paths with Hans, a troll hunter. Initially not believing his claims, the group suddenly find themselves face to face with a troll, and must work with Hans to defeat it. Both the bridge encounter and the cave sequence are swathed in an intense atmosphere, and Troll Hunter is an excellent first calling card that proves Øvredal’s horror credentials.
During the press tour for his most recent movie, Passenger, André Øvredal has repeatedly declared that – in his opinion – it is his most frightening movie. The Passenger teaser trailer seemed to reinforce this, but as unsettling as it is in places, it just falls short of taking that top spot.
The story finds a young couple who acquire a demonic presence known as “The Passenger” after stumbling across a gruesome highway accident. What makes Passenger upsetting is the mythos and rules behind the entity, primarily that once you are marked, there is no getting away from it. When it comes to scary scenes, the key moment from the teaser still manages to cause a jump, but a later scene featuring a movie night in the middle of the forest delivers the most sustained threat.
As valiant and visceral an effort as Passenger is, André Øvredal has yet to surpass his 2016 film, The Autopsy of Jane Doe. It stars Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch as a father and son pathologist team who find themselves faced with a rush job autopsy of a Jane Doe. As a storm rages outside, the pair begin their work only to find that the body is like no other they have ever encountered before. The unidentified female’s body is covered in strange symbols and all of her internal organs appear to point to a different cause of death. Their work to unravel the mystery of the body is made harder still as weird things start to happen around them.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe is a masterclass in tension. Øvredal is great at manipulating sound to create scares and this film demonstrates that perfectly. If The Autopsy of Jane Doe does nothing else, it will definitely make you wary of trilling bells. Each and every time the bell goes off in the movie, it is piercing a thick silence (as well as the viewer's heart). Full of witchy and supernatural moments, The Autopsy of Jane Doe draws the audience into the horror, to a near-suffocating degree. For maximum fright factor, I recommend watching it during the dead of night, but beware the bad dreams that will follow.
