Dashcam

Dashcam
Starring Annie Hardy, Amer Chadha-Patel, Angela Enahoro, Mogali Masuku
Directed by Rob Savage

There's been very few films I can remember that literally gave me a headache - sure, there's been many that've given me a metaphysical headache, but not many that literally made my head throb with an inhuman strength where I felt I was literally dying. "Dashcam" is one of those films. It's not because of the found footage style with the camera literally flying all over the place, but it has to do with the main character, the story, and the overall feel for this supposedly "super scary" film from the director of 2020's over-hyped Zoom horror film "Host."

Annie (Annie Hardy) hosts a streaming show out of her car called "Bandcar: The Internet's #1 Live Improvised Music Show Broadcast From a Moving Vehicle," where she terribly raps about words that her followers give her. She's a huge right-wing fanatic who's vehemently against masks, worships MAGA, and is an all-around terrible person. She leaves Los Angles to go to London to visit her old friend Stretch (Amer Chadha-Patel), and is angered at his "liberal" leanings and pro-mask stance. She steals his car and is offered money from a woman to take an elderly woman named Angela (Angela Enahoro) to a certain destination. Angela isn't all right in the head, as she often releases her bowels and doesn't talk, but Annie soon discovers that there's much more to Angela - and those around her - than meets the eye, and her night of adventure could turn into the last night of her life.

The title of the film - "Dashcam" - seemed to suggest something totally different than what the film delivered on. A dasham (by definition) is "a video camera mounted on the dashboard or windshield of a vehicle and used to continuously record the view of the road, traffic, etc., through the windshield." I was expecting something akin to a lesser-known dashcam film called "Invasion" that was released back in 2005, and from what I remember I didn't mind it. I was hoping for another outing where the camera stayed stagnant and focused on the terrors of the road ahead, but instead it became "Cloverfield" on crack, as the main character carries the camera around shaking it like she's in a 9.9 magnitude earthquake for most of the film, and while I can understand the budgetary restraints the film went through, it lacked any sense of...anything...making it the least bit enjoyable.

Rob Savage directed 2020's "Host," which many call the scariest movie ever made, but I wouldn't even put it on my top fifty list, maybe even top hundred. It's a film shot entirely through Zoom about a group of people in their individual homes who conduct a seance, and what I can appreciate about it now is the fact that it was stagnant - the camera didn't move like a heroin junkie looking for his next fix. Still, it was formulaic and predictable, much like "Dashcam" is, and Savage's work is entirely overrated in my opinion.

Tackling the events of the pandemic yet again, Savage's "Dashcam" turns into a troll's paradise: the main character is your stock character extreme right-wing nutjob who thinks she's better and smarter than everyone else in the world, who rocks a MAGA hat and insults everyone around her for being sheep to the mainstream lamestream media. Annie Hardy (who actually hosts a real-life internet program called BandCar which I can only hope is better than this parodied version) is excruciating as a main character, someone who has 0% redeeming qualities, is the nastiest, rudest person I've ever seen as a main character, and who's voice is shrieking even before she starts screaming, but when she does scream it elevates to near-glass-shattering annoyance. It's her voice that gave me this insurmountable headache that not even a whole bottle of Excedrin could cure, and even if she wasn't a wholly unlikable person it'd probably be the same way. As she endures her night of terror, she learns absolutely nothing along the way, stopping to make fun of the situation even as people are dying around her, and she's being chased by a crazed, possibly supernatural woman.

The shaky camerawork is a way to showcase a story with a minimal budget, but when that story is basically a wash-rinse-repeat cycle throughout the film, it might've worked better as a short film. Annie and her friend Stretch (who would ever be a friend to Annie is beyond me) endure the night as they constantly get chased by Angela, who is aptly played by a silent Angela Enahoro (if only Annie's character was silent too), and the film moves from car to car, from location to location, with the same lame jump scares time and again. It's incredibly generic and typical, with not a lot of real frights to be had, at least from this jaded horror fan's standpoint.

The entire film has this eerie feeling that it really shouldn't exist in a way. It's hard to explain, but the whole exercise felt stupid, lifeless, and unnecessary. There's no moral to the story, no actual story really at all, and the characters remain the same throughout the ordeal. There's nothing redeeming about this film at all, despite for the sheer nuttiness of it, but that doesn't make for a good movie, or even a passable one. In this case, it's only purpose is to supply the viewer with constant headaches and irritations that's only heightened by the most irritating, annoying character in recent cinema history.

The Score: D-