After the excellent Host, Rob Savage once again tries his hand with ‘Dashcam’ a social horror film, where streaming gets out of control.
The movie tries to emulate in some way what would be a real streaming transmissions (Twitch). This is why the main character is totally stupid, as most successful streamers, especially American ones, tend to be totally stupid and chaotic characters who are interested in attracting a very young audience. However, Savage may have overdone it a bit here.
Annie Hardy’s character is stupid even in the moments where she is fighting for her life. The film doesn’t take itself seriously and it’s hard for the viewer to get into the situation as the character sings while being shot or says silly insults while escaping the clutches of death. It’s as if the film is looking for the meme rather than seeking raw tension. It doesn’t seem Savage’s intention to make a comic film either, it clearly doesn’t, so he simply wanted to play with the contrast between life and death situations with a character who doesn’t seem to be fully aware of the gravity of his situation.
Savage wants to be original, but the result is total chaos, almost as much as the camera movements.
Perhaps where this film loses the most is in the overall direction and editing. Dashcam is a difficult film to follow, not only because of its host character, but also because of the jerky camera movements that make it difficult to appreciate almost anything that is happening. If you blinked you are already missing something in the most tense moments, and it’s a shame because the orchestration of the scenes is quite good, but there is too much movement and everything happens too fast.
Although the story appears to be quite simple, it should be noted that it has more elements. However, the film is so fast-paced that it’s hard to stop and think about what’s really going on. The streaming commentary helps a bit in determining that.
In short, Dashcam could have been a segment of a movie like VHS or any other horror anthology of the last few years in the mockumentary genre. This means it could have been 20 or 25 minutes long and it’s possible that it would have been more effective than making a longer movie. It is too obvious that the story was stretched out to last 80 minutes, It has moments of good orchestration of scenes and other moments of accomplished atmosphere, but it doesn’t seem enough to recommend it.
