From November 28 in Russian release 'Soul Transporter', a horror in which Nick Frost unsuccessfully tries to portray a villain.

According to the plot of the film 'Soul Transporter', after announcing an engagement among friends and a subsequent quarrel, Ann (Synnøve Karlsen) and Patrick (Luke Norris) get into a taxi. In the car, as per classic trope, there is a chatty driver (Nick Frost), but not just a lover of small talk, but a man with his own plans for the passengers, who are in for a long and difficult night.

The localization of the title can be misleading for several reasons. The film, originally called Black Cab, has nothing to do with either the hit horror (where the localization is also far from the truth) or the motifs of ancient Greek myths. Nick Frost in this film is no modern-day Charon akin to Kirill Kyaro's character from the domestic series 'Passengers', and he certainly isn't transporting any souls anywhere.

Ivan Kilyakov

And Your Mother Too: Review of the Occult Horror 'Soul Collector'

The 'Soul Collector', the season's trendiest horror about the FBI's pursuit of a Satanist maniac, has been released. In the role of the frenzied cult servant is Nicolas Cage. About how director Oz Perkins

Open material

Overall, the setup of the story doesn't warrant a feature-length film. It's more of a sketch for some horror anthology or an episode of a series about urban legends. Here's a highway with ghosts, here's a mysterious driver and his 'victims'. The intrigue for most of the time is sustained only by the unclear motives of Frost's character, but this turns out to be frighteningly insufficient.

The problems for the, incidentally, middling TV director Bruce Goodison ('Doctor Foster') immediately become two-fold.

The first is a lack of experience and an obvious understanding of how horror works. There hasn't been such a ridiculous and inappropriate use of jump scares in any moderately notable film for a long time. Moreover, they don't serve to develop the story: the heroine 'suddenly' sees a ghost for no reason, it's not explained, not played out, and is only motivated by the creators' desires. And these inserts also don't work as boo-moments because they appear exactly in the episodes where you expect them.

The second and more global problem is the key casting decision. Nick Frost is a wonderful actor. His charm and comedic talent are beyond any discussion. But this role simply didn't 'fit' him. If the recent performance with the sharp transformation of rom-com hero Hugh Grant into a horror villain has been praised by everyone, here a similar trick didn't work.

Vitaly Gizatullin

I Believe You, Of Course: Review of the Film 'Heretic'

'Heretic' is in wide release. A new horror from the trendy studio A24, in which Hugh Grant has read too many books and invented his own religion, dangerous to others.

Open material

There isn't a single scene where you believe that Frost's character could be a cruel antagonist. In fact, he's not a villain, but a victim of circumstances, but before the viewer, along with the hapless passengers of the black cab, finds this out, according to the director's intention, there should be this mysterious aura and growing tension between the people in the car.

So it turns out that 'Soul Transporter' is neither an engaging ghost story nor a horror about a maniac driver. The only thing the film managed to do is create a decent atmosphere of an endless ride along night houses, past someone's dreams. But you can't get far on that alone.

Trailer: