If there’s one factor you must learn about DASHCAM, it’s this: sure, it’s fucking with you. Rob Savage’s second function movie – his first for Blumhouse, following the success of super-sharp lockdown Zoom-seance hit Host – is imbued with the mischievous persona of an web troll, designed to shock, confound, enrage and entertain in equal measure. The opposite factor you must know is that it’s good, and confirms Savage – and his co-writers and fellow producers Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd – to be among the many most enjoyable voices in British cinema, horror or in any other case.
A lot of DASHCAM’s gleefully obnoxious tone comes from its central determine. Annie Hardy doesn’t simply star within the movie – she virtually is the movie. Taking part in a heightened model of her already-provocative self, the previous Big Drag musician’s artistic output was central to the movie’s genesis. As a result of simply as Host completely mimicked the expertise of a Zoom name – a realism that accentuated each expertly dealt with jolt – DASHCAM is introduced as a Periscope livestream of Hardy’s real-life web present ‘Band Automotive’, aka ‘The Web’s #1 Reside Improvised Music Present Broadcast From A Shifting Car’. Basically, Hardy drives round with a unfastened hip-hop beat enjoying from her keyboard, spooling off crass nonsense lyrics primarily based on phrases her viewers write within the feedback. Throw within the context of lockdown (the characterised model of Hardy is an outspoken anti-masker with a MAGA hat and no sense of non-public boundaries) and smash all of it into an occult horror film, and also you get DASHCAM.
It’s a tougher promote than Host, then. However as a lot as Annie, the character, is deliberately hateful for a lot of the runtime – railing towards lockdowns, breaking into previous good friend Stretch’s (Amar Chadha-Patel) flat, cackling whereas refusing to masks up — she’s additionally flippant, humorous and captivatingly anarchic. DASHCAM dares you to not be entertained by her foul-mouthed improvs (pattern lyric: “Lookin’ spherical for a butt buffet”) and oddball wit (Annie eats a pickled “Covid egg” on the deserted Beano Café). Even earlier than the horror parts kick in, it’s weirdly compelling simply watching her trigger on a regular basis carnage whereas interacting along with her followers. In genuine Periscope type, a gradual chat-stream within the backside left presents a working commentary of occasions (preserve a watch there for clues when the mayhem kicks in), whereas response emojis float up from the underside proper — not solely formally playful, however an actual mimicry of the real-life tech that retains all the pieces completely plausible.
It’s a movie that merrily doles out jolts like custard pies.
Savage doesn’t go away you ready too lengthy earlier than kicking DASHCAM up a gear – and, as with Host, as soon as it ramps up, it’s relentless. When Annie finds herself answerable for an sick, aged lady (performed by pilates instructor-turned-extraordinarily sport first-time actor Angela Enahoro), the movie goes hell-for-leather: put together for snapped limbs, decapitations, and a gradual stream of piss, shit, blood and vomit. Shot fully on iPhone, there’s some frenetic camerawork right here as Annie and Stretch frantically scramble for his or her lives, however Savage shows outstanding management within the chaos – the adrenaline is actual, the shocks completely timed, the mandatory data successfully conveyed. He even sneaks in some real heat in Annie and Stretch’s love-hate friendship, displayed in snatched glimpses between immolations and demonic levitations. It’s a miraculous balancing act.
Within the second, although, you’ll probably be having an excessive amount of enjoyable (or be too busy cowering on the tense set-pieces) to note the care within the craft. Particularly raucous when considered with an viewers, DASHCAM delivers a head-spinningly kinetic blast of punky, Sam Raimi-esque cinematic vitality, enjoying like an unholy amalgam of Evil Useless II, The Blair Witch Challenge and Jackass: The Film. It’s a movie that merrily doles out jolts like custard pies, with all of the blunt influence of a Fanta can to the face. Come the tip of its snappy 77-minute runtime (really 65 minutes, minus its must-watch, oh-my-God-did-Annie-actually-just-say-that-about-Jason-Blum’s-mum? credit), you’ll really feel such as you’ve been spun in a centrifuge. In a great way. Deliver your personal seatbelt, and strap in tight.
