Black Cab, Shudder’s new film starring Nick Frost (Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz, Hyperdrive) is quick toswerve away from being a bona fide horror ride. It merges somewhere onto the highly trafficked super freeway of psychological thrillers where the likes of Leave the World Behind, Knock at the Cabin, and the recent Cellar Door manage to do more by showing less.
Directed by Bruce Goodison (Our World War, Home Fires), and written by David Michael Emerson with additional material by Frost and Virginia Gilbert, the film also stars Synnøve Karlsen (Last Night in Soho, Medici) in a standout performance that is fierce and deeply layered. Luke Norris (The Weekend Away) also stars in this film that recalls the ethereal 1981 slow-burn thriller Ghost Story, which featured the great Fred Astaire in a tale about how internal angst can become the most frightening thing around.
Our story tracks beleaguered couple Anne and Patrick (Karlsen and Norris), who hail a black cab and quickly discover their über chatty driver (Frost) just won’t let them stew in their own misery. The couple had a spat. The ride with Frost’s sketchy cabbie becomes a major buzzkill when they realize he has no intention of taking them home. Twist, turns, and evil ensues — at a high cost, of course — in a story that offers Nick Frost, a more versatile actor, comedian, and screenwriter than you may realize, a stellar opportunity to play an antagonist and chew up the scenery at any given turn. Brooding, edgy, and disturbing, Black Cab is an enjoyably bumpy ride.
The Road Be Haunted
Black Cab is a thriller about a couple whose cab ride takes an unexpected turn when their seemingly friendly driver diverts them to a desolate, haunted road, ultimately revealing his sinister intentions. Released in 2024, the film delves into themes of trust and deception in a chilling narrative.
- Release Date
- November 8, 2024
- Director
- Bruce Goodison
- Cast
- Nick Frost , Synnøve Karlsen , Luke Norris , George Bukhari
- Runtime
- 87 minutes
- Writers
- Virginia Gilbert
- Streaming Service(s)
- Shudder
- Frost and Karlsen give powerful performances that maintain tension.
- Black Cab has a strong, moody atmosphere that's stylish and works well.
- Black Cab teases its true intentions for too long.
The entire span of Black Cab, save for its very last moments, takes place during one long and horrifying night. We find Anne and Patrick leaving a formal function in a huff. They’re barely on speaking terms, and we immediately wonder why the couple have stayed together for as long as they have. Some of those answers, which are offered via flashback in the film’s latter half, give us additional context, even though we could easily swap out this kind of couple from any number of recent thrillers where the dude is a douche, and the wife can’t seem to get her emotional bearings. That trope aside, Frost’s unpredictable cabby soon establishes him not as the cheery man we first meet, but as a dangerous alpha male.
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But our cabbie, too, has a backstory, and you’ll have to wait nearly 70 minutes before you fully comprehend it. In the meantime, enjoy yourself when Frost’s angered driver emerges and knocks out entitled Patrick, leaving Anne in a state of disbelief and soon locked up in the backseat of a cab with weirdly tinted windows holding the illusion of raindrops. Doors locked with nowhere but the road ahead to go (a road, we learn, that may be "haunted"), our cabbie’s behavior becomes more frenetic and his questions about Anne’s marriage and well-being all the creepier and more intrusive.
What does this man really want? Well, it must have something to do with the horrifying ghost figure that emerges occasionally on the “haunted” roadway they’re on. The sudden shot of the creepy figure outside the passenger side of the car while the car is moving is enough to send Anne into a panic. But our cabbie had already arrived at that point long ago. Questions emerge: is there a link between the cabbie and the ghost figure, and what the heck does this cab driver — or even the “ghost” — want with Anne?
Black Cab Teases You Too Long Before the Twists
It takes too long to happen, but when the tormented cab driver detours off the supposedly haunted road he’s been driving on, there is a significant plot twist and perhaps a time to pause and catch our breath. It sends the film into a maddening final stretch. The cab driver, clearly being led to kidnap Anne for some reason, becomes all the more frustrated because, well, the guy is human, after all. If something or someone is guiding him to engage in these terrifying acts and antagonize our dear Anne, he suddenly wonders if he’ll ever get to the end game.
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Nick Frost fans should be pleased. The actor/writer/producer, who’s currently filming the live-action version of How to Train Your Dragon and wrote and starred in the upcoming thriller Get Away, does not disappoint. At times, you wonder how cathartic it is for Frost to play somebody so over the top — the emotional outbursts, the mopey expressions birthed from internal struggles, those wild eyes behind the glasses. Frost manages to make this freaky character all the more believable when the script finally reveals who he is. This won’t be the last time we’ve been excessively teased in the horror thriller, so hang on for a while longer as the story plays out.
Frost & Karlsen Are Great in a Moody Movie
To be sure, Synnøve Karlsen turns in a laudable performance as tormented Anne, who ultimately cannot escape the fact that she’s in a failed marriage or that her personal woes will be used as a kind of deadly weapon against her. There are some brilliant moments between Frost and Karlsen, in fact, and no doubt their most intense scenes were “choreographed” because, folks, things get real nasty. The throughline of anger, regret, and desperation plays out well in this tale.
Meanwhile, the mood is pitch-perfect and admittedly spooky, thanks to the script and how Adam Etherington, the director of photography, evokes both a sense of dread and mystery. Stay tuned: By the final frame, you’ll wonder if a sequel might add even more context to this quirky but infectious tale. Black Cab hits Shudder on November 8.
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