By Robert Scucci
| Published
Have any friends that you stopped hanging out with because they turn every single conversation into some form of political commentary? You know the type– the kind of person who replies “typical Harris supporter” or “typical Trump supporter” after you send them a cute video of a pug riding on a skateboard. Dashcam, the found-footage horror comedy about a live stream gone wrong is about this exact kind of person who somehow manages to plug their political agenda into the dialogue when they should instead be focused on, you know, running for their life from whatever the hell it is that’s chasing them.
Completely committed to the bit, Dashcam is a wild found footage experience, but I’d be lying to you if I said I wanted to root for its patently unlikeable protagonist, which somehow makes the film more fun than it has any right to be.
Insufferable Influencers
The entirety of Dashcam is shot from the perspective of Annie (Annie Hardy), a right-wing influencer, conspiracy theorist, and content creator whose show, Band Car, features her coming up with music on the spot by turning comments from her viewers into lyrics in a comical fashion. Annie seems like a lot of fun to be around for her willingness to spew out hilarious songs that are jammed with sexual innuendo while driving around the city of Los Angeles. But that’s where the fun stops because Annie is one of those aggressively anti-mask people that you ran into during the pandemic who would rather cause a scene whenever she feels like her rights are being infringed upon.
Tired of the lockdowns in Los Angeles, Annie travels to the UK to visit her old bandmate, Stretch (Amar Chadha-Patel), who’s currently working as a food delivery driver and living with his left-leaning girlfriend, Gemma (Jemma Moore).
Stretch and Annie get along just fine at the beginning of Dashcam, but you can see the strain in their friendship when Stretch, a former musician, is trying to scrape together a living while Annie antagonizes the restaurants they enter because of their mask policies. Annie also antagonizes Gemma by refusing to remove her MAGA hat while staying at their apartment, leading her to steal Stretch’s car when she overhears his girlfriend chewing him out.
This Order Better Tip
Deciding to accept an order with Stretch’s delivery app, Annie has a run-in with a restaurant owner who wants her to transport Angela (Angela Enahoro), a sick and elderly woman to an undisclosed location. Dashcam kicks it into high gear when Stretch tracks down Annie through her live stream and Angela starts acting like she’s possessed by a supernatural entity, putting their lives in imminent danger. From this point forward, Annie and Stretch run for their lives in the typical found footage shaky camera fashion as they’re chased through the woods, on the highway, and into condemned buildings that may very well be the source of danger they’re trying to escape.
And what is the danger, you ask? Angela has telekinetic powers, and loves to vomit blood all over the place.
As the plot unfolds in Dashcam, Annie proves just how unlikeable she is when she does things like draping politically-charged t-shirts over car crash victims and continues with her usual shtick. Annie’s willingness to commit to the bit is commendable in Dashcam, but at this point I became frustrated with her for not realizing how serious her situation actually is. Boasting that grating “crazy uncle at Thanksgiving” kind of energy, Annie never lets up with her politics, which is the last thing she should be worrying about.
Frustrating In All The Right Ways
Dashcam is an incredibly frustrating film to watch because of its unlikeable protagonist. And listen, It’s not because of her political affiliation, but because she just doesn’t know when to drop it. I reckon if I, or anybody else for that matter, were being chased by a floating old lady spewing bodily fluids and speaking in tongues, I’d probably view it as a non-partisan issue and focus on my survival, and the survival of my friend who I dragged into this mess.
If Annie was aggressively left-leaning in her politics, I’d find her equally annoying because she simply doesn’t know how to read the room before opening her mouth.
However, whenever Annie’s live stream disconnects, only to reconnect in an entirely new location that’s more often than not covered in blood, her followers who think it’s all an elaborate bit are absolutely ruthless in their assessment of the situation, giving Dashcam an authentic feel that’s hard to replicate.
Streaming Dashcam
That is all to say that Dashcam is absolutely hilarious, and it’s thanks to Annie’s audacity as much as I hate to admit it. And I can’t really fault Dashcam for being such a politically driven movie when there’s so much more at stake because it’s a product of the pandemic times that inspired it– people really went hard in politicizing every single aspect of their life, so I can’t really condemn the film for having this sense of realism during what most people look back at as an uncomfortable, confusing, and scary time to be alive.
Your mileage may vary with Dashcam but it does everything it sets out to do, and has a healthy amount of laugh-out-loud moments peppered in throughout its intense found-footage horror sequences that will have you sitting at the edge of your seat until the credits roll.
As of this writing, you can stream Dashcam on Hulu.
