BLACK CAB (2024)

Studio:   Shudder
Director: Bruce Goodison
Writer:   David Michael Emerson
Producer: Jan Roldanus
Stars:    Nick Frost, Synnove Karlsen, Luke Norris

Review Score:

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Summary:

A woman must confront her troubled life when a strange cab driver forces her to take a ride on a road haunted by the ghost of a grieving mother.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Haunted by dreams of a ghostly woman on a remote road, Anne reluctantly agrees to let her abusive boyfriend Patrick move back in with her, even though she suspects him of infidelity. Over drinks with their friends Jessica and Ryan, Patrick unexpectedly announces he and Anne are getting married, which surprises and distresses Anne. Jessica, who warned Anne about Patrick cheating on her, tries consoling Anne privately, but Anne dismisses Jessica out of frustration.

Anne hails a cab driver named Ian to take her and Patrick home. Ian becomes oddly involved in the couple's personal affairs as Patrick continues acting aggressively toward Anne. Over time, Ian and Patrick become increasingly combative with each other.

Ian recognizes Anne as a previous passenger. When Ian mentions he picked up Anne outside a maternity hospital, Patrick concludes Anne is pregnant, which sparks another argument.

The escalating tension between the couple and the cab driver reaches its breaking point when Ian uses a taser to incapacitate Patrick. After restraining Anne and Patrick in the backseat, Ian returns to the road.

Anne mentions seeing a woman in Ian's cab when he pulled up outside the bar. Ian insists he did not have a previous fare, although he curiously asks Anne what the woman looked like.

Following a short stop where Ian forces Anne to drink drugged water and she also sees the ghostly woman briefly, Ian finally reveals he is taking Anne to "the most haunted road in England." Ian recounts how folklore says a woman, who was escaping her husband with her daughter, was struck and killed by a car on that road. With no one to help her, the daughter tragically died alone in the forest days later. The woman's ghost now wanders the remote road searching for her lost child.

When Ian steps away from the cab during a gas station stop, Anne discovers Patrick had been feigning unconsciousness for some time. Before Ian returns to the vehicle, Anne reveals she knows Patrick cheated because Jessica told her.

Succumbing to the sleeping medication Ian put in her water, Anne dreams of the ghostly woman. Recognizing Anne can see the apparition too, Ian tells Anne the story of his first encounter with the ghost on that road, and how she was able to haunt his thoughts. The ghost pointed at a picture of his sick son before turning into a vision of Ian's wife Elaine and disappearing.

Ian brings Anne and Patrick to his rundown, isolated home. Ian continues telling Anne how his wife Elaine thought Ian invented his first ghost sighting as an alibi for cheating on her. He soon saw the ghost haunting their son's nursery. Thinking the ghost was intent on taking a child, Ian plotted to track down Anne and offer the ghost her unborn baby to save his son.

While Ian is out of the room, Patrick confesses to Anne that he slept with Jessica, but he also expresses enthusiasm over he and Anne presumably becoming parents. When Ian returns, a struggle ensues that ends with Ian slitting Patrick's throat.

Anne tries escaping, but Ian recaptures her. Ian confesses his wife wanted to divorce him and take their son, which gave Ian the dark idea to kill their boy as a way to hurt Elaine. Disturbed by the thought, Ian drove down the haunted road and encountered the ghost, who was able to read the murderous desire in his mind. The ghost continued driving Ian mad with thoughts about smothering his son, so he kidnapped Anne to make it stop.

When they arrive at the end of the road, Anne reveals she was at the maternity hospital where Ian first picked her up because she suffered a miscarriage, meaning she is no longer pregnant. Anne then sees the ghost. Accusing it of stealing her unborn child, Anne chases the ghost into the surrounding forest.

Distraught that he no longer has a sacrifice, Ian resumes driving his cab. Anne suddenly runs into the road. Distracted by a phone call from Elaine, Ian's cab hits Anne, but he doesn't find a body when he gets out to check. Shortly after returning to the road, Anne appears as a ghost in Ian's backseat.

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Review:

Anne's estranged boyfriend Patrick is a real piece of work. Arrogant, abrasive, abusive, and also identifiable by another unflattering a-word, he has been in the doghouse ever since Anne caught wind of him being unfaithful. So imagine Anne's surprise when Patrick unexpectedly and triumphantly announces to two friends that he and Anne are getting married, something she definitely did not agree to.

Recognizing her distress, and well aware of Patrick's problematic personality, Anne's friend tries consoling her in a bar bathroom. Anne doesn't want to discuss it. Right now, she'd rather face the frustration of how poor choices put her in this position. She strides outside to hail a cab, except Patrick insists on getting in with her, because he'll be damned if Anne thinks she can embarrass him by asserting any sort of independence.

Things don't go from bad to worse immediately, but they start getting there when cab driver Ian becomes combative with Patrick. The uncomfortable situation gets even stranger after Ian recognizes Anne as a passenger he previously picked up at a maternity hospital, which Patrick sees as a sign she's pregnant. Working out what that means for the couple will have to wait, however, because Ian has something else in mind. With Patrick suddenly electrocuted into unconsciousness and Anne restrained alongside him in the backseat, Ian sets off for "the most haunted road in England," though Anne has no idea why.

Once Anne and Patrick enter Ian's vehicle, the story closes its borders with the outside world, isolating "Black Cab" to run like a chamber play whose single location rolls on wheels. For the following 45 minutes or so, viewers end up held captive with the couple. There are a few brief breaks from the car's tight quarters. Killers and kidnappers in horror movies have a habit of failing to fill their fuel tanks prior to a premeditated abduction, for example, so of course Ian has to stop at a gas station where we can have the requisite moment of Anne getting within an inch of someone hearing her pleas for help. Yet for the most part, "Black Cab" largely becomes a conversational confrontation between Ian and Anne while Patrick remains incapacitated for a large portion of the runtime.

As long as their careers last long enough, it's common for predominantly comedic performers to try their acting talents in a serious drama at some point, or to take an against-type role audiences wouldn't normally associate with their perceived personas. The list of "Saturday Night Live" actors alone who've gone on to feature in Oscar or Emmy Award-nominated projects includes a double-digit number of names. Add in people ranging from Robin Williams and Steve Martin to Jim Carrey and Jamie Foxx, and there's no shortage of standups and comics who've prominently played historical figures, serial killers, or unstable individuals with dirty deeds on their minds.

Ian can be considered that kind of role for Nick Frost, although Frost has a harder time than most shaking free from his affable demeanor to play a completely convincing creep. It's not just the mirthful memories of Frost getting silly with slapstick in "Shaun of the Dead" or "Spaced." Even behind a big, grim beard, Frost still projects a "teddy bear" quality that prevents him from selling the cab driver as a frighteningly sinister psycho.

In Frost's defense, Ian isn't intended to be a fully unhinged sociopath. Partly because of Frost's inherently jovial presence, and partly because the script underwrites many elements of the movie, Ian is more vaguely defined as an emotionally disturbed man whose capacity for inflicting violence never seems particularly definitive. This makes him a beige-colored villain whose character conflicts come out of Frost's ill fit rather than authentic layering baked into the story.

Beyond performances that are mostly passable, it's the skeletal nature of that story negating "Black Cab's" ability to have an effect as a supernaturally psychological chiller. The crux of the plot connects to a local legend about a grieving mother who haunts the road mentioned earlier. It's such a generic pinch of familiar folklore, the ghost isn't even given a name, as if inadvertently confirming "Black Cab" isn't trying anything above the bare minimum to scare anybody with its tepid tale of tortured individuals symbolically facing fears along a slightly surreal road.

While the cinematography and pacing kick up enough motes of mood to make the movie work better as an atmosphere-building slow burn, the lack of substance in the story makes "Black Cab" harder to get into as a narrative. The novelty of Nick Frost playing a possible madman wears out its welcome quickly, replaced by wondering if the movie will ever drive toward a real surprise or recognizable purpose. In reality, the film appears content to instead wander around in interpretive darkness with no unique destination in mind.

Review Score: 45

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