Within 5 minutes of being on screen in horror flick Black Cab, Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead) turns brash chivalry into unhinged madness as taxi driver Ian, who one fateful night picks up an emotionally estranged couple on the brink of splitting up, the timid Anne (Synnove Karlsen) and boisterously toxic Patrick (Luke Norris). But before long, Ian abducts the couple, taking them for a ride down an English country road that Ian claims is deserted and haunted, leading them towards an unknown fate and for unknown reasons.
Setting most of the film within the claustrophobic confines of a black taxi, director Bruce Goodison and screenwriter Matthew Holness (and with Nick Frost and Virginia Gilbert credited for “additional material”) utilise the natural tension that grows from being trapped in a small space, going somewhere unknown, with an unhinged mad man at the wheel, to have this uncomfortable lingering of terror hang over the film.
But it’s Nick Frost’s brazen performance as Ian growing nastier and crazier with each passing scene that really works in tandem with the tension. There is a true unpredictability in not knowing what Ian will say or do next, and in the middle of nowhere, that’s truly terrifying. Frost leaning totally into the unhinged nature of Ian works in favour of making it a pretty captivating performance to watch.
Mixing in a few jump scares that work well (and a few cheap ones that don’t), the story ebbs and flows into the supernatural, adding an extra layer of probably unnecessary complexity to an otherwise straight forward plot. The peppering of ghost story elements in the first half of the film do feel like shoe-horned exposition to set the audience up for what ghoulish terrors may await later in Black Cab, but they also come at points where it stalls the natural flow of the rising intensity.
Where the real tonal inconsistencies of Black Cab lie are withing Anne’s backstory, one that is sadly filled with trauma and haunting visions (along with the emotional abuse she receives from Patrick). However, the horrors of Anne’s trauma aren’t fleshed out enough to be of much substance and are often at odds with the spiralling mindset of Ian, who as the story goes on, reveals his traumas as the reason behind the cab abduction.
The sums unfortunately do not add up to the whole for Black Cab. Even with a dedicated and unsettling performance from Nick Frost, and a lingering tension captivating in the first act, the plot begins to fall apart as it battles between being scary or dramatic, but never really using both together to enhance the overall film.
Black Cab is streaming on Shudder from November 8.
