Dashcam - Review (London Film Festival 2021)

Connection Lost. 2 / 5

Directed by Rob Savage.

A caustic online streamer’s anarchic behaviour triggers a non-stop nightmare in this screenlife frightfest.

To say the last 18 months have been tough would be an understatement. There have been many films that have tapped into lockdown and the pandemic but Dashcam takes the top spot as the most irritating of the bunch.

Rob Savage's Host was also made during the peak of the pandemic and shows how smart and small-scale storytelling can still pack an effective punch. Dashcam is unfortunately everything Host isn't.

Still with a small budget but significantly more resources and backing, this modern attempt at Blair Witch Project has the potential to capture the same horror but fails thanks to its horrifically maddening lead. Annie Hardy is what I hope and pray to be a purposefully unlikeable caricature with strong political and opinionated views which after you realise is here for the long run sucks any joy left from the experience.

There are some brilliantly terrifying sequences throughout that show real skill and tease a supernatural presence through the eyes of a livestream which makes the aggravating characters that much more frustrating with poorly timed attempts at humour that almost always fall flat, ruining any built atmosphere.

Topping it off with the most strenuous and grating end credits of all time, I wish I could be more positive about Dashcam but it quickly became an unpleasant cinema experience that gets carried away in its own hysteria making for a painfully slow 80 minutes.

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