10 Movies That Would Work Better As Horror
1. Passengers
Passengers is set on a spaceship carrying 5,000 colonists in hibernation pods. Due to a malfunction, an engineer called Jim awakens 90 years early.
Terrified of living out his life in isolation, he wakes up a journalist called Aurora, condemning her to the same fate. Though he hopes to have a romance with Aurora, she berates and shuns him, telling Jim he ruined her life. But since this is Hollywood, the pair eventually fall in love.
Why Passengers was written as a sci-fi romantic blockbuster is a mystery, since the idea of being trapped in space with a stranger is beyond terrifying. And when Aurora discovered Jim deliberately woke her to fulfil a lovey-dovey fantasy, the movie should've transitioned to horror immediately. Passengers could've played out like The Shining in space, with an isolated man losing his grip on reality, driving him to violence and insanity.
If told from Aurora's viewpoint, Jim would come across as a nice guy initially. When Aurora uncovers the truth about Jim, her arc could shift from a forced love interest to a survivor.
Instead of going down this route, the filmmakers made Passengers into a run-of-the-mill blockbuster with a non-sensical love story.