Night Fare (2015)

Worth watching, but don't expect too much. Two friends on a night out in Paris decide to be jerks and they get their due. Pretty straight forward, except that three quarters in, the film takes a sharp turn and becomes something other than a standard slasher film. Stick with it until the end.

I promise anyone that likes a good thriller will like this movie. There is a great surprise ending as well. I don't want to give anything away but there should be more movies like this.

Two friends Chris (Jonathan Howard) and Luc (Jonathan Demurger)reunite in Paris and plan on having a night out on the town. They hitch a ride in a taxi, but skip out of the taxi without paying on the basis that they were going to 'nip' to the cash machine for some money. However, this cab driver doesn't take kindly to these two men not paying their fare and the cab driver doggedly pursues them in what turns out to be a terrifying manhunt....Night Fare is a mixed bag of a film which inevitably has some bad elements to it, but on the whole I found that it's strengths did outweigh its weaknesses..Where the film is at its best is when the focus is on the crazy cab driver psychotically pursuing the fare jumpers. Many of these scenes are intense and the performances from the two protagonists are really good and they were both able to convey genuine fear incredibly well. The film only has a short run time of 80 minutes and generally covers this ground in a fast-paced and effective manner. I've always felt that films of this nature work better when the madman's identity is kept a secret - it helps to build intrigue, suspense and mystery and generally leaves you wanting to learn more about the madman. This is one reason why I appreciated the reveal as well as being surprised by it; the cab driver's psychotic violence had a point to it which actually makes it a much deeper film than one would initially assume.As good as it is for the most part, the film does have some rather glaring weaknesses; whilst the film is tense and suspenseful for a good chunk of its running time, director Julien Seri does over-stage the action (particularly in the first half). It seems that wherever our protagonists run to the cab driver is there (within seconds) and this even occurs at times where it's unlikely or improbable that he could second guess what they could do. The dialogue in this film is also poor and only consists of our two friends talking about their love for the same woman which inevitably causes conflict between the two men. Outside of this, we don't learn anything about the men (other than one of them is French and one of them is English and they both love the same woman) and as a result of this the character development on offer here is at best poor and at worst non-existent.The film is also set in Paris which is a city that's home to over 2 million people yet the streets and roads are completely deserted; so where is everybody and why are there only one set of coppers patrolling the streets in Paris?? Whilst the cab driver is an intimidating presence and he is pretty damn terrifying, I do feel that everything was overdone slightly with his character - I can understand how he acquires his incredible fighting skills, but how do you train yourself to be able to withstand being Tasered - literally thousands of volts of electricity into his body and he doesn't even flinch?? What are his clothes made of? Rubber?? He felt more like a superhuman comic book character than a real person. It's narrative flaws like this that jar with the serious philosophising at the end of the film and it's these things that prevent it from being a brilliant film - although it is still a good film I hasten to add.The reveal at the end is a bit of a curve-ball ending and by the time the credits started rolling I felt as though I'd watched some mad cross between Duel, Oldboy and A Clockwork Orange. The reveal did provide us with a much wider story and the idea of the cab driver being an avenging angel who initially has been saved from himself and ultimately does the same to others did at least show that some thought had gone into the story and made the film not quite as generic as it could have been - it also leaves the film open for a sequel.Night Fare is imperfect, but it is pretty tense and suspense and more importantly rather surprising and in spite of its glaring flaws I did find it enjoyable.

If Batman mated with the truck from Stephen Spielberg's Duel (don't tell me that isn't physically possible, the man can beat Superman, he could figure it out) nine months later one of them would give birth to something that looked like Night Fare.At first blush, Night Fare is a movie about an evil car, a vengeful taxi hungry for its fare. But as the story unfolds it reveals new and surprising layers of complexity.Two friends meet in Paris two years after a mysterious event forced one of them to go on the run from the law. They celebrate their reunion with a night of partying and revelry, and when the party's over they take a taxi home. But at the last minute they stiff the taxi driver and make a run for it. It's a simple prank, a fleeting moment of drunken foolishness, but the taxi and its mysterious driver proceed to hound them through the streets of Paris, running them down side roads and back alleys, seemingly out for revenge over the lost toll.But slowly it becomes clear things are not so simple. The taxi and its driver aren't just out for payback, and the toll the two men owe is far higher than the fare for the cab ride.Night Fare is not a subtle movie. Our first glimpse of the taxi draped under a blood red silk cloth is accompanied by a driving synthetic soundtrack, and when the mysterious driver pulls away he reveals a man lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood. "Be afraid of this car" the movie tells us.And so when we see that same car roll up to pick up our protagonists we already know they're in for trouble.night-fare-1-e1444236412846From that moment the tension never really lets up. The taxi and its driver come after the two men with an unstoppable, almost supernatural, force. As the night goes on and every safe haven the men turn to is eliminated, they're forced to face a moment they thought they had left behind for ever.Night Fare is a cool movie, and the driver is a great antagonist. He's nearly always shrouded in shadow, a hulking silhouette that seems more like an avenging angel than a flesh and blood man. He may be a bad guy, but all of the people he targets (including our protagonists) are worse. So when he rips through a room full of gangsters with a katana, we start to side with him. And in time the movie rewards us for that instinct.There's a moment at the end of Night Fare seemed certain to ruin the movie. It is a scene of pure exposition, telling us exactly what the taxi driver is about, where he came from, what his motives are. And it's told with a cartoon.It shouldn't work. It breaks all the rules. When you have a cool unstoppable vigilante with an evil car, giving every single detail of his back story in an info-dump right at the end of the movie ought to be the worst possible thing you could do.But somehow it works. It works because it leads into something else, something that ties everything together in a way that couldn't have been possible without it.Night Fare starts out like a slasher flick with a car in the role of the slasher, but it slowly turns into something else: A story of redemption.Read more over at www.humanechoes.com