Anti-vaxxer, anti-masker, MAGA fan and social media star Annie Hardy (Annie Hardy) takes a flight to the pandemic-blighted UK to call in on her old bandmate Stretch (Amar Chadha-Patel). When Annie’s abrasive nature and penchant for live streaming absolutely everything immediately creates tension in the household and causes significant issues in Stretch’s work life as a food delivery guy, there’s no particular prospect of conciliatory behaviour being shown the guest from across the pond.
In fact, Annie decides to take off with Stretch’s car and finds herself with a stack of money to drive a mask-wearing woman called Angela (Angela Enohoro) to a specific address. No sooner has she agreed to the job that matters take a turn for the strange and the evening only gets crazier and more terrifying from there…
Considering the sheer amount of discourse surrounding this film, from its festival showings last year to the most recent stories in the UK surrounding its supposed ban from the Vue cinema chain, it would seem too easy to simply love this merely for being a beacon of free speech and “the movie they tried to ban!” or to loathe it for the engineered controversy and that Dashcam’s central character is one of the most offensive and unlikeable in the horror genre.
Either way, objectivity appears to have been instructed to take a back seat while folks on both sides froth at the mouth and tell you exactly why you should think as they do. With all of that as a backdrop, reviewing Dashcam seems like a fool’s errand but I am that fool and let’s go run that errand.
As with Rob Savage’s previous found footage film Host, this one doesn’t hang about either, avoiding the fake scares and long sequences of naff all going on which the opening half of so many films in the subgenre use to pad the running time. Here, there’s sufficient character intro detail to get you started but it’s not long before the main plot kicks in and the shit hits the fans literal seconds after Annie has chosen to accept her mission for the night.
From then on, most of the story beats are generally of the “what the hell is going on?” variety and exposition is scant but Dashcam’s focus is more about the journey than the destination, careening from one gory set piece to the next as our protagonist is confronted with ever more bizarre situations and a primary pursuer that just won’t stay dead (or is it undead?).
The plentiful, escalating chaos also resolves a number of the issues around Annie being somewhat difficult to take a ride with. I’m sure there’s more than a little glee to be felt when someone on screen who doesn’t share your world view is plunged into a situation that starts badly and only gets worse and her random, sweary outbursts every time she was under attack did raise a chuckle or two, I’ll admit.
That’s not to say that Dashcam either condones or condemns its streaming star. Annie is merely presented as a person with a very specific viewpoint who doesn’t care who she offends as she crashes through life. Her opinions may be difficult to listen to but that’s part of the point and it’s up to the individual viewer as to whether or not her comments are genuinely offensive. As someone who knew people who did not survive Covid, the anti-vax dialogue did raise my hackles but does that mean it shouldn’t be voiced, even in a fictional context such as this? We’re on a slippery slope if our initial reaction is just to silence anyone with a conflicting viewpoint without entering into any sort of discussion.
Yes, using all of this as a platform to step into a found footage nightmare may be questionable from a moral and ethical standpoint but the framework of Annie’s “Band Car” show, plus her drive to broadcast her polarising view of the world, is exactly what lands her in an increasingly large amount of trouble, the anger from Stretch turning out to be the very least of her worries.
Anyone expecting the structured approach of Host is going to be thrown for a loop by this sophomore effort, which throws both its characters and cameras around the landscape, tumbling down hills, falling into water and turning more than one situation into a literal, absolute car crash. There are the usual periods of unfocused, motion sickness-inducing camera work but there are also sequences which take the opportunity to show off surprisingly gory effects, rather than fall back on the fleeting, budget-friendly glimpses of bloodshed so beloved of this type of movie.
As found footage films go, Dashcam doesn’t fall into the trap of being short on incident, in fact the ongoing ordeal stops to draw breath so infrequently that I felt battered into submission by it all as the credits rolled. Subtlety isn’t on the menu and the combination of that and the unrelentingly abrasive nature of its leading lady may prove an endurance test but for those who can push past that there’s a breezy, nasty little trip waiting for them.
It may not be the game changer it’s been touted as in some quarters but it also shows enough glimpses of savage inventiveness to breathe at least a little life into a corner of horror which often necessitates wading through an hour of nothing to get to the good stuff. For all of the discussion swirling around Dashcam, one thing it definitely isn’t is dull. It’s just a shame that the hype and the ongoing furore will probably override what is a perfectly serviceable frightener with particularly dark humour and splattery moments. And if you’re getting tired of the main on-screen action you can always read the scrolling comments from Annie’s viewers.
In fact, Annie decides to take off with Stretch’s car and finds herself with a stack of money to drive a mask-wearing woman called Angela (Angela Enohoro) to a specific address. No sooner has she agreed to the job that matters take a turn for the strange and the evening only gets crazier and more terrifying from there…
Considering the sheer amount of discourse surrounding this film, from its festival showings last year to the most recent stories in the UK surrounding its supposed ban from the Vue cinema chain, it would seem too easy to simply love this merely for being a beacon of free speech and “the movie they tried to ban!” or to loathe it for the engineered controversy and that Dashcam’s central character is one of the most offensive and unlikeable in the horror genre.
Either way, objectivity appears to have been instructed to take a back seat while folks on both sides froth at the mouth and tell you exactly why you should think as they do. With all of that as a backdrop, reviewing Dashcam seems like a fool’s errand but I am that fool and let’s go run that errand.
As with Rob Savage’s previous found footage film Host, this one doesn’t hang about either, avoiding the fake scares and long sequences of naff all going on which the opening half of so many films in the subgenre use to pad the running time. Here, there’s sufficient character intro detail to get you started but it’s not long before the main plot kicks in and the shit hits the fans literal seconds after Annie has chosen to accept her mission for the night.
From then on, most of the story beats are generally of the “what the hell is going on?” variety and exposition is scant but Dashcam’s focus is more about the journey than the destination, careening from one gory set piece to the next as our protagonist is confronted with ever more bizarre situations and a primary pursuer that just won’t stay dead (or is it undead?).
The plentiful, escalating chaos also resolves a number of the issues around Annie being somewhat difficult to take a ride with. I’m sure there’s more than a little glee to be felt when someone on screen who doesn’t share your world view is plunged into a situation that starts badly and only gets worse and her random, sweary outbursts every time she was under attack did raise a chuckle or two, I’ll admit.
That’s not to say that Dashcam either condones or condemns its streaming star. Annie is merely presented as a person with a very specific viewpoint who doesn’t care who she offends as she crashes through life. Her opinions may be difficult to listen to but that’s part of the point and it’s up to the individual viewer as to whether or not her comments are genuinely offensive. As someone who knew people who did not survive Covid, the anti-vax dialogue did raise my hackles but does that mean it shouldn’t be voiced, even in a fictional context such as this? We’re on a slippery slope if our initial reaction is just to silence anyone with a conflicting viewpoint without entering into any sort of discussion.
Yes, using all of this as a platform to step into a found footage nightmare may be questionable from a moral and ethical standpoint but the framework of Annie’s “Band Car” show, plus her drive to broadcast her polarising view of the world, is exactly what lands her in an increasingly large amount of trouble, the anger from Stretch turning out to be the very least of her worries.
Anyone expecting the structured approach of Host is going to be thrown for a loop by this sophomore effort, which throws both its characters and cameras around the landscape, tumbling down hills, falling into water and turning more than one situation into a literal, absolute car crash. There are the usual periods of unfocused, motion sickness-inducing camera work but there are also sequences which take the opportunity to show off surprisingly gory effects, rather than fall back on the fleeting, budget-friendly glimpses of bloodshed so beloved of this type of movie.
As found footage films go, Dashcam doesn’t fall into the trap of being short on incident, in fact the ongoing ordeal stops to draw breath so infrequently that I felt battered into submission by it all as the credits rolled. Subtlety isn’t on the menu and the combination of that and the unrelentingly abrasive nature of its leading lady may prove an endurance test but for those who can push past that there’s a breezy, nasty little trip waiting for them.
It may not be the game changer it’s been touted as in some quarters but it also shows enough glimpses of savage inventiveness to breathe at least a little life into a corner of horror which often necessitates wading through an hour of nothing to get to the good stuff. For all of the discussion swirling around Dashcam, one thing it definitely isn’t is dull. It’s just a shame that the hype and the ongoing furore will probably override what is a perfectly serviceable frightener with particularly dark humour and splattery moments. And if you’re getting tired of the main on-screen action you can always read the scrolling comments from Annie’s viewers.