The road from comedy to horror is a short one for Black Cab lead Nick Frost, yet unlike past roles, this new one isn’t played for laughs. The Shaun of the Dead star is dead serious as his character, a crazed cabbie, takes two unsuspecting passengers on a nightmarish ride. The hellish route in Bruce Goodison’s movie starts off straightforwardly, however, an eerie element soon closes in on the cast and alters the course.
Things are clearly not good between Anne (Synnøve Karlsen, Last Night in Soho) and Patrick (George Bukhari), and the tension between the couple becomes less and less underlying as the movie progresses. And once Frost enters the picture, that relationship drama briefly takes a backseat to the more pressing problem at hand. After a bad night out, Anne and Patrick hail the cab that carries them off to a creepy and possibly haunted English road.
It should not come as a shock when Black Cab steers into vehicular sinisterness. After all, this movie begins with Patrick telling Anne and their two companions a familiar campfire tale. One about a car, naturally. From there the story becomes predictable as Frost’s character switches from obnoxious to wicked, albeit without him missing a beat. There is no tonal shift here to catch us off guard, but knowing what lies ahead isn’t necessarily a bad thing either.
Despite the obvious setup here, director Goodison and writer David Michael Emerson — with additional material from Frost and Virginia Gilbert — do try to get clever with the story. Yet enough things have lined up too conveniently and perfectly for this shared journey to only be a coincidence. And the revelations themselves, if they can even be considered that, are as organic as they are foreseeable. Then there is the overcrowding; on top of a mad motorist and his captives is a possible supernatural presence. In the end, Black Cab would have been better off sticking to just one of these menaces rather than taking on both. They never quite gel as well as they should.
Hats off to Goodison and cinematographer Adam Etherington for creating a properly haunting road setting. Because of their attention to mood and lighting both in and out of the car, Black Cab fares well in the atmosphere department. It is almost enough to compensate for the uneven story. The nighttime scenery has all this sudden depth without succumbing to the standard appearances of some other modern horrors. The movie never goes over the top with its environments and aesthetic, however, the subtle bits of surrealism still pay off.
For a movie that takes place largely inside a car, Black Cab keeps your focus even when its own attention is divided. Frost has a lot to do with that captivation. In terms of story, there is an absence of genuine surprise or complexity, but the overall moodiness and taut atmosphere help to smooth everything over. Especially once this ride gets a bit too bumpy.
Black Cab premieres on Shudder on November 8.
Pictured: Nick Frost and Synnøve Karlsen in Bruce Goodison’s Black Cab. Courtesy of Vishal Sharma. A Shudder Release.
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