By Simon Thompson
Co-directed and written by Bertie and Samantha Spiers, Midnight Taxi is a taut, moody, and gritty low budget London-set thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Despite a deceptively simple premise, Midnight Taxi is a movie which will keep you guessing from start to finish like a good psychological thriller should.
The plot of Midnight Taxi follows a cab driver named Eddie (Ladi Emeruwa), who suffers from both general insomnia and sleep-walking. One night as he’s driving his cab, he falls asleep by the side of a curb and on waking up discovers the body of a dead escort. More than understandably, disturbed by what he’s just seen, Eddie resolves to find the dead girl’s killer- fearing that the murder might have been committed by him in a sleep-walking stupor. Eddie decides to use a journalist friend’s contacts to go on a one-man investigation of London’s seedy underbelly in the hope of finding the culprit.
Visually and tonally, I would describe Midnight Taxi as having all the sleek bells and whistles by virtue of how much technology has evolved to allow smaller budget films to look like major studio projects. What sets it apart from the rest of the pack however, is its harking back tonally to the kinds of unflinching thrillers that have sadly become a lost art. The on-location shooting, its depiction of the dark side of London, and some of the story elements, strongly reminded me of Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa, and the way the film depicts an atmospheric and lonely nighttime cityscape gives off strong flashes of other classic urban thrillers such as Taxi Driver, Collateral, Chinatown, House Of Games, Zodiac, Mystic River, and Cruising.
From an acting perspective Midnight Taxi is for the most part pretty solid across the board, with the stand out being Ladi Emeruwa’s performance as Eddie. Emeruwa brings an understated everyman quality to the role, which works because the character isn’t some kind of Batman or Phillp Marlowe-level deductive genius, he’s a regular bloke put into an unbelievably frightening situation-which gives the audience a real connection with the character because they’re just as clueless as one another.
The only real sticking point that I have with Midnight Taxi is that the ending is a little too obvious and neat. I’m not going to go deep into spoilers because this is a movie best enjoyed with as bare bones a plot synopsis as possible, but I think a Blow Out or Cruising style dark and ambiguous ending would have been far more tonally consistent than the one Berite and Samantha Spiers ended up deciding upon. While this is not a deal-breaker at all, it doesn’t inspire you to want to watch it multiple times.
Despite having a slightly underwhelming ending however, Midnight Taxi is still absolutely worth a watch for the neo-noir vision that Bertie and Samantha Spiers have so beautifully crafted. If you’re looking for a short, sharp, shock style viewing experience, Midnight Taxi is definitely more than worth seeking out.
Midnight Taxi is available now on VOD platforms.
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