BLACK CAB (2024)

New streaming on Shudder!
Directed by Bruce Goodison.
Written by Virginia Gilbert.
Starring Nick Frost, Synnove Karlsen, Luke Norris, Tilly Woodward, George Bukhari, Tessa Parr.
Check out the trailer here!!

Anne (Synnove Karlsen) and Patrick (Luke Norris) are a troubled young couple. Patrick has cheated on Anne and she knows it. And to make matters worse, Patrick has just announced their plans to wed to their friends at dinner, without even clearing it with Anne first. After dinner, the couple get into a cab, not knowing it is being driven by a madman (Nick Frost). Meanwhile, the dark road the cab is driving down appears to be haunted by a legendary ghost.

BLACK CAB is an off-kilter little thriller with a few too many cogs working overtime in the machine. It is a thriller about a mad cabbie kidnapping a couple. It’s a drama between a couple destined for failure. It’s a ghost story about a weeping mother who lost her child on the side of the road. Now, mixing these concepts can be the recipe for goodness, as it allows a lot of story to be played with. Unfortunately, writer Virginia Gilbert and director Bruce Goodison just don’t make the three elements gel. I think the reason for this is that the core of BLACK CAB is a ghost story that just doesn’t have the legs to be a feature length movie.

The weeping hitchhiker at the side of the road is a tale as old as time. In Mexico, they have the Weeping Woman, and La Llarona has had plenty of films made about her lately, even though most of them aren’t very good. Actually, none of them are. But the ghostly hitchhiker who is constantly looking for a ride home from drivers down country roads has been covered in movies, books, anthologies, campfire tales, and probably cave paintings where a cavegirl goes to the Spring-Rock Mixer with a cave boy and she dies when they wreck their woolly mammoth and then haunt that very stretch of road other cave people used to ride their woolly mammoths home from work at the quarry. Yabba-Dabba-Doo! This story is a shortie. A brief anecdote. And you can tell because there really isn’t a lot for the ghost to do, save for supplying a few jump scares every five minutes or so. The ghost has no personality and while Nick Frost’s cabbie thinks he knows what she wants, her motivations are never really revealed—at least until the very end, which I will get to in a bit.

There is a whole lot of time of literally spinning wheels in BLACK CAB. Much of the film is simply Frost conversing with a terrified Anne, ranting about how he once gave Anne a ride to the hospital, ranting about his family, ranting about the ghost. Each rant punctuated by the aforementioned ghost jump scare. It worked in COLLATERAL, where a hitman (Tom Cruise) chats with a cab driver (Jamie Foxx), but let’s face it, Nick Frost and Synnove Karlsen are just not as electrifying as Cruise and Foxx and the scenes Frost and Karlsen share simply lack any kind of pop to carry the film.

Frost is fun. He is an engaging character and while I wouldn’t call his lines hilarious, they do lend a sort of inappropriate levity to this dire situation Anne finds herself in. Frost is able to convey the emotions needed for the role as a lot has been taken from him, and there are times the moments of levity, which most likely were ad libs on Frost’s part, take away from the dire situation. Since Anne’s husband Patrick (Luke Norris) is passed out for most of the movie, it’s up to Synnove Karlsen to add to the conversation. She is a solid actress, and though the range required in this film is scared in the back of a cab and scared running from a cab, there really isn’t a lot required for the role. Though there are moments Karlsen fights back, I wouldn’t necessarily call her role strong. There is a revelation from Karlsen that occurs late in the game that might have changed everything and even stopped the story from getting too grave for everyone and while there are subtle hints as to why the Anne holds back this crucial piece of the puzzle, it’s never really explained. It ends up being a major plot hole and might even turn your feelings about Anne’s character once revealed. Delving deeper may get too far into spoiler territory, but the revelation occurs way too late and really causes more questions to arise than answers.

While the jump scares work from time to time in BLACK CAB, they aren’t anything we haven’t seen before in the umpteen BlumHouse flicks most horror viewers have seen through the years. Writer Virginia Gilbert is responsible for a lot of English dramas and director Bruce Goodison has been making war stories and more drama since the nineties, but neither have a background in horror, which might be the reason none of these scares feel relatively fresh or new. I like it that Nick Frost has had some kind of horror comeback as he is releasing three horror films this year very close together; this one, last month’s KRAZY HOUSE, and next month’s GET AWAY (both of which I haven’t seen yet). BLACK CAB was a misfire for me, but I’m hoping one or both of the other two are worth recommending. I just can’t do it for BLACK CAB.