If there's one thing you need to know about DASHCAM, it’s this: yes, it is fucking with you. Rob Savage’s second feature film – his first for Blumhouse, following the success of super-sharp lockdown Zoom-seance hit Host – is imbued with the mischievous personality of an internet troll, designed to shock, confound, enrage and entertain in equal measure. The other thing you need to know is that it’s brilliant, and confirms Savage – and his co-writers and fellow producers Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd – to be among the most exciting voices in British cinema, horror or otherwise.
Much of DASHCAM’s gleefully obnoxious tone comes from its central figure. Annie Hardy doesn’t just star in the film – she practically is the film. Playing a heightened version of her already-provocative self, the former Giant Drag musician’s creative output was central to the film’s genesis. Because just as Host perfectly mimicked the experience of a Zoom call – a realism that accentuated every expertly handled jolt – DASHCAM is presented as a Periscope livestream of Hardy’s real-life internet show ‘Band Car’, aka ‘The Internet’s #1 Live Improvised Music Show Broadcast From A Moving Vehicle’. Essentially, Hardy drives around with a loose hip-hop beat playing from her keyboard, spooling off crass nonsense lyrics based on phrases her viewers write in the comments. Throw in the context of lockdown (the characterised version of Hardy is an outspoken anti-masker with a MAGA hat and no sense of personal boundaries) and smash it all into an occult horror movie, and you get DASHCAM.
It’s a harder sell than Host, then. But as much as Annie, the character, is intentionally hateful for much of the runtime – railing against lockdowns, breaking into old friend Stretch’s (Amar Chadha-Patel) flat, cackling while refusing to mask up — she’s also flippant, funny and captivatingly anarchic. DASHCAM dares you not to be entertained by her foul-mouthed improvs (sample lyric: “Lookin’ round for a butt buffet”) and oddball wit (Annie eats a pickled “Covid egg” at the abandoned Beano Café). Even before the horror elements kick in, it’s weirdly compelling just watching her cause everyday carnage while interacting with her followers. In authentic Periscope style, a steady chat-stream in the bottom left offers a running commentary of events (keep an eye there for clues when the mayhem kicks in), while reaction emojis float up from the bottom right — not only formally playful, but an exact mimicry of the real-life tech that keeps everything utterly believable.
It’s a film that merrily doles out jolts like custard pies.
Savage doesn’t leave you waiting too long before kicking DASHCAM up a gear – and, as with Host, once it ramps up, it’s relentless. When Annie finds herself in charge of an ill, elderly woman (played by pilates instructor-turned-extraordinarily game first-time actor Angela Enahoro), the film goes hell-for-leather: prepare for snapped limbs, decapitations, and a steady stream of piss, shit, blood and vomit. Shot entirely on iPhone, there’s some frenetic camerawork here as Annie and Stretch frantically scramble for their lives, but Savage displays remarkable control in the chaos – the adrenaline is real, the shocks perfectly timed, the necessary info effectively conveyed. He even sneaks in some genuine warmth in Annie and Stretch’s love-hate friendship, displayed in snatched glimpses between immolations and demonic levitations. It’s a miraculous balancing act.
In the moment, though, you’ll likely be having too much fun (or be too busy cowering at the tense set-pieces) to notice the care in the craft. Especially raucous when viewed with an audience, DASHCAM delivers a head-spinningly kinetic blast of punky, Sam Raimi-esque cinematic energy, playing like an unholy amalgam of Evil Dead II, The Blair Witch Project and Jackass: The Movie. It’s a film that merrily doles out jolts like custard pies, with all the blunt impact of a Fanta can to the face. Come the end of its snappy 77-minute runtime (actually 65 minutes, minus its must-watch, oh-my-God-did-Annie-actually-just-say-that-about-Jason-Blum’s-mum? credits), you’ll feel like you’ve been spun in a centrifuge. In a good way. Bring your own seatbelt, and strap in tight.
