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BLACK CAB (2024)
3 stars
Acorn Media International. Blu ray, DVD and Digital. 7th April
Middle of nowhere. The countryside. A woman in white walking through the trees. A cab driving through the night on country roads. Pregnant woman in the back. She sees odd things out the window. A ghostly presence – Anne (Synnøve Karlsen) awakens in her bed from this nightmare? A fairly effective opener, shame the rest of the film doesn’t live up to it.
Anne goes out for a meal with Patrick (Luke Norris), her boyfriend, and another couple Ryan and Jessica. Patrick seems like a bit of dick and Anne doesn’t look overly pleased to be there. He announces over champagne he is moving back in and they are getting married. Anne looks less than thrilled and leaves the restaurant, hailing a black cab driven by Nick Frost. Patrick demands he comes with her.
“Just drive for now” Patrick tells the driver. The cabbie can see things are tense and offers to kick the boyfriend out. He seems quite jovial and is called Ian, but he is very chatty and has rather too much to say. He claims he recognises Anne and seems to knows too much about her…
Things take a turn for the sinister, with Patrick unconscious from being tasered and them both trapped in the back of the vehicle. But the story then morphs from a kidnapping into a tale of ghosts on the most haunted road in England!
Therein lies the problem with the script by Virginia Gilbert – it can’t seem to decide what it wants to be. Is it an abduction or is it a supernatural chiller? In the end it doesn’t really succeed at being either. The best thing here is Frost as the driver who swings from friendly to angry and menacing. Director Bruce Goodison tries to keep things interesting with various angles inside the confines of the car and seeing Ian in the rear view mirror. However, there’s not enough here to sustain a feature film – it feels overstretched and ultimately inconsequential.
Steve Kirkham
