Black Cab (15) |Home Ents Review

A sleek and simple horror film premise gets tortured to death. 

Anne (Karlsen) and abusive fiancé (Norris) get into a black cab after a night out. Their cheeky chappy driver (Frost) soon takes them on a trip they may not survive to suffer PTSD over. 

Coming to Black Cab, you might expect clammy, brutal realism – and that is, to a point, what you get. Who could deny that there would be something claustrophobic and terrifying about being locked in a black cab, tormented with talk and then physically tortured? When, of course, torment by talk is something many real-life passengers have to put up with in cabs.  

Art imitates life: Frost’s character talks endlessly. And the back story his ravings reveal is a bit too gritty and realistic for my tastes. Even though there is also a supernatural element, I was left wanting some flair, some feeling of the transcendent power of nightmares. A dreaming, not a man talking a lot and some energetic attempts to escape being tied up. This is like a feature length version of that infomercial from a few years back about not letting a friend get into an unlicensed cab after a night out. 

Despite Frost being indubitably creepy and nasty, and Karlsen approaching martyr-level suffering by close of play, Black Cab ends up being relentless and boring. My compañera in watching horror films fell asleep!

Another nice, simple premise killed off by back story, repetitive flashbacks and generally too much REASON. How about letting your inner drives and dreams do the driving, for a change? After all, we have known for some time that ‘the sleep of reason creates monsters’. Properly. Bring it on!

Black Cab is out on DVD, Blu-ray and digital on 7 April 2025.