Black Cab (2024) – Film Review

Director: Bruce Goodison
Cast: Nick Frost, Synnøve Karlsen, Luke Norris
Certificate: 15

By Roger Crow

Nick Frost never gives a bad performance, and as creepy cabbie Ian in this slick horror thriller, he delivers another top turn as a tormented soul.

Synnøve Karlsen is also excellent as his passenger, Anne, and full marks too to Luke Norris as her controlling, abusive fiancé.

“Ghostly flashbacks”

Brutally abducted and tied up, the couple are at the mercy of their captor, and with their destination unknown, things become more frightening as ghostly visions of a woman appear to torment them.

As secrets are revealed about Anne’s past, Ian’s true motive starts to become clear.

Black Cab starts well with a solid first act. It’s beautifully shot, lit, directed and the script is witty and credible. But then things become a little woolly half way through as ghostly flashbacks, or flash forwards, are over-used. The pay-off, when it finally comes, feels like the 87 minutes you spend on this journey with Nick and company leads to a dead end. A shame. If it had a more solid structure with two thirds thriller and one third ghost story, it may have worked better.

“Personal demons”

Frost is a formidable presence who may have channelled personal demons of his own for the role. As a couple of side notes, his autobiography is well worth a read, while I’ve recently been listening to the audiobook of his excellent cookery tome, Fried Gold.

As scary as Black Cab is at times, it’s perhaps less weird than the driverless taxis currently picking up customers on the streets of San Francisco. If I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes recently, I wouldn’t have believed it. And you know it’s only a matter of time before a glut of thrillers featuring those drone cabs tell similar stories, hopefully with more success.

Roger Crow( Writer )

Adopted Yorkshireman Roger Crow developed a passion for film and TV in the 1970s and 1980s. He has been a published film and TV reviewer since the 1990s; a world travel and restaurant critic since the noughties, and for the past decade has assessed the pros and cons of live gigs and theatre productions around the UK. His ideal day would involve reviewing a performance of Bat Out of Hell, followed by a Pad Thai while being serenaded by Texas on a cruise around Europe.
crowsfeat.com

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