Dashcam
(2021) 76 min
Rated: R (Gore, language)
Country: United Kingdom, United States
Director: Rob Savage
Starring: Annie Hardy, Amer Chadha-Patel, Angela Enahoro,
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Annie decides to take her livestream on her trip to the UK during the pandemic and encounters an unusual woman.
Synopsis:
Annie Hardy (playing herself) drives along trying to rap as she livestreams during the COVID-19 pandemic. Annie flies to England to hang out with her old bandmate friend Stretch (Chadha-Patel) who does doordash now. Annie is politically right and wears a MAGA hat, hates Liberals and doesn’t wear a mask during the pandemic.
During one of Stretches deliveries Annie causes a scene and gets kicked out after screaming. This causes Gemma, Stretch’s girlfriend to ask him to kick Annie out. Before that happens Annie steals Stretch’s car and decides to fulfill one of his doordash orders.
Annie goes to the Beano Cafe where she’s supposed to pick up an order but the place looks deserted. A lady walks up to her saying she should have cancelled the order but also suggests transporting an elderly woman named Angela (Enahoro) to a specific address for a large sum of money. Annie agrees to it.
During the trip Angela poops herself and Annie stop the car at a diner. Annie tries to help Angela clean up in a bathroom stall and sees an Ariana Grande tattoo on her belly. A lady enters the restroom area searching for Angela. Angela freaks out and the lady attacks Annie. Annie and Angela flee the diner.
Stretch manages to find Angela and Annie via the livestream. As Annie and Stretch argue, Angela vanishes. Stretch manages to find Angela in a tree and he falls to the ground. Angela floats down.
The woman searching for Angela earlier has a shotgun and tries to kill Annie and Stretch. Annie and Stretch find Angela in the street bleeding from her mouth and under her mask she has staples closing her mouth shut.
Stretch and Annie try to flag down a car that ends up hitting Stretch. It’s the woman who was shooting at them earlier. Annie manages to slip into the car and as the woman reaches for the steering wheel, Annie breaks the woman’s arm. The woman claims that Angela is 16 years old and her daughter. Stretch gets the woman’s phone from her back pocket and finds a photo of the two ladies together. Angela has the same Ariana Grande tattoo.
Angela appears and the woman runs up to her. Angela promptly twists off the woman’s head. Angela chases Annie and Stretch into a nearby amusement park. They enter a mirror maze and Angela cuts Stretch’s throat killing him.
Annie steals a car from the parking lot and drives away with Angela running in pursuit. Angela gets inside the car and Annie manages to tie her up with seat-belts. Angela then levitates the car and crashes into a lake. Annie stabs Angela in the head with the metal prongs of a sear headrest and manages to escape the car and swim to safety. Angela floats out of the lake.
Annie wanders through the countryside and finds a large house that she manages to get into. She realizes this is the same house that she was originally supposed to take Angela to.
She ends up in a basement full of occultists who slice their necks open. Angela is there and attacks Annie. Annie has a knife and slashes through Angela’s mouth, killing her. A creature is born from Angela and chases Annie.
Annie runs down a hall in the labyrinthine underground and finds a car park. Some of them even cars she had driven previously. The large looming monster follows her, Annie manages to pin it under a car and smash it’s face in with a keyboard killing it.
She sits inside the car, her livestream reconnecting after being disconnected for a few minutes. She starts rapping to her audience as usual while covered in monster goo and blood.
Review:
This found footage horror didn’t have much of anything to grasp at. The convoluted story was made worse with the inclusion of a character so obnoxious that I eagerly was hoping the film would focus on her friend or anyone else aside from her. Unfortunately it did not. The film suffers greatly from having Annie’s obnoxious character having to carry the film. Perhaps her character quirks would be forgivable in a side character when a more level-headed main character is in a film because inevitably the audience has to identify with the main character. With a main character so grating, it’s no wonder that the film has a low score across review sites.
The one highlight of the film is the pacing. If one thing can be said is that this film is reasonably short and mercifully quick. It’s still unpleasant to sit through.
Again, there’s no real deep story here. Just some things that happen on a crazy night. This film is only on a recommend for those who are die-hard found footage fans who don’t mind loud awkward raps about shitting on tits. So basically no one.