Shock jock Annie Hardy (playing a vaguely fictionalised version of herself) takes her internet show BandCar – a live, improvised music stream where Hardy creates simple beats and interweaves them with vulgar lyrics suggested by viewers – abroad to London, hoping to escape the COVID lockdowns imposed on her native Los Angeles. On her first turbulent night in the city, she discovers far more than she bargains for, when a surprise guest in her vehicle sends Hardy down a dark path full of everything from demonic possessions to cult rituals.
Starring: Annie Hardy, Amar Chadha-Patel, Angela Enahoro & Jemma Moore
Streaming on Shudder in the US now and in Australian cinemas now
Rob Savage made waves in the horror world with Host, his 2020 pandemic lockdown-set possession film shot entirely through Zoom. As a feat of filmmaking against the odds alone it was impressive. That it managed to be as downright haunting as it was was nothing short of a miracle. With Dashcam Savage looks to see if lightning will strike twice, upgrading from a laptop to dashcam – one that makes it far further than just a car – with another DIY fright-fest completely derailed by the polarising pandemic opinions of its lead.
Annie Hardy is, simply put, insufferable as the vulgar, MAGA hat wearing, misinformation spewing internet star; whose success is predicated on how many people she can piss off in a single sentence. It’s a unique approach, making this kind of character your lead, and there’s a question to be asked about why Savage has chosen this awful combination of just about every bad take rolled into one person. You could say that a film of this nature doesn’t have to carry a message, but with such a divisive figure at its centre, it certainly seems like Savage is trying to say something, even if the film never wants to dig into that decision. The one thing we know for sure is that Hardy’s incessant chattering is worse to witness than any of the actual scares thrown at us.
When the things that go bump in the night do begin to crop up – a mysterious passenger by the name of Angela (Angela Enahoro) acting as the catalyst – Savage throws everything at the screen at once. There’s nausea inducing shaky cam as Annie flees from pursuers, fountains of gore erupting and worst of all, the fine work of Amer Chadha-Patel as Stretch (Annie’s dutiful friend) completely undercut at during every attempt to authentically react to a traumatic event by Annie’s endless snark.
But for all the ideas Savage might throw at the screen, the lack of any tension thanks to Annie’s grating personality means that the horrors simply fill the screen, devoid of any tension and seeming even more unrealistic than most horror films thanks to the constant chat-stream filling half of the screen. Still Savage should be commended for going absolutely bonkers with the plot, even if you can’t quite tell what is happening or why, and a scene in an abandoned carnival’s hall of mirrors provides some genuinely inventive jump scares.
At barely 80 minutes long, Dashcam overstays its welcome, thanks to the mind-numbingly painful chatter of Annie Hardy. Rob Savage’s sophomore feature shows some promise and willingness to branch out beyond the genre trappings that defined him, but ultimately falls far short thanks to its insistence on sticking with Hardy throughout it all. Here’s hoping we get a more engaging protagonist for that inevitable Microsoft Teams follow-up.