The usually affable and genial Nick Frost plays chillingly – and refreshingly – against type in this new psychological horror thriller directed by Bruce Goodison. Frost plays Ian, an initially pleasant black cab driver who picks up warring couple Anne (Synnve Karlson) and Patrick (Luke Norris) at the end of a night out with friends that has turned sour. The couple have been living apart for a while, but Patrick has decided to move back in with Anne – she doesn’t seem hugely excited at the prospect – and it transpires that Anne is pregnant and hasn‘t yet told the controlling, brutish Patrick. Ian, meanwhile, quickly turns from a standard long-suffering cabbie into something a little more threatening. He won’t put up with any of Patrick’s nonsense – he zaps him with a taser sourced from Bulgaria on the Dark Web – and it becomes APPARENT that he has no intention of taking them where they want to go. Instead, he’s heading for the gloomy and remote Maybell Hill, the scene of a tragic accident which killed a young mother and her newborn son. It’s said that the mother still haunts the mist-shrouded road, and as the cab plunges deeper into the night, things take a turn for the extremely weird and twisted…
Black Cab’s USP is, without a doubt, Nick Frost. His performance here is chilling, worlds away from the Cornetto trilogy. He uses his unique physicality to create a terrifying and compelling figure who seems absolutely in control and utterly single-minded for reasons that become evident as the film progresses. In places, Frost seems to be channelling his inner Jack Nicholson from The Shining. The film cleverly positions its initial “terrorising psychopath” premise against its more traditional “restless ghost” theme, and the results, if occasionally slightly jarring, are generally pretty effective and affecting. Karlson and Norris provide strong support – especially the former, whose terror is almost palpable – and Goodison exploits the full potential of his misty, middle-of-nowhere locations. But this is resolutely Frost’s film, and he’s clearly having a whale of time here delivering the sort of performance few would have thought him capable of. Black Cab provides a surprisingly tense ride… but in future, we’ll probably stick to Ubers.
BLACK CAB is streaming now on Shudder
