Dashcam (horror film)

Dashcam (stylised in all caps) is a 2021 horror film directed by Rob Savage, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd.

It stars Annie Hardy, Amer Chadha-Patel, and Angela Enahoro, and follows a semi-fictionalized version of Hardy who leaves Los Angeles for a surprise visit to her former bandmate in London during the COVID-19 pandemic, only to find herself in a series of nightmarish events after agreeing to escort a strange elderly woman to a secret location in her friend's car.

Savage felt the concept would make for a good found footage horror film, and ultimately asked Hardy to appear in it.

Dashcam had its world premiere at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, where it was a runner-up for the People's Choice Award: Midnight Madness.

It grossed $70,585,[1] and received mixed reviews; its scariness, visual format, and provocative themes were praised, but most felt its effectiveness was undermined by Hardy's character being too grating and unlikeable.

American musician and conservative conspiracy theorist Annie livestreams while driving her car, where she creates music on the spot with comments from the live chat being used as lyrics.

Tired of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and homelessness in Los Angeles, she flies to London for a surprise visit to her friend and former bandmate Stretch, who now works as a food delivery driver.

She arrives at a closed restaurant, where the owner offers her money to transport an elderly woman named Angela to an address she has written down.

It also features the primary cast of Host in small roles; Jemma Moore plays Stretch's girlfriend Gemma, James Swanton (who portrayed the demon in Host) portrays the monster, Seylan Baxter plays the restaurant owner who tasks Annie with transporting Angela, Haley Bishop voices the flight announcer at Los Angeles International Airport, Emma Louise Webb voices cabin crew on Annie's flight, Radina Drandova plays an emergency responder, and Caroline Ward and Edward Linard portray newlyweds who are accidentally killed by Stretch.

The critical consensus reads, "Dashcam is visually and thematically provocative, although the film's grating protagonist undercuts its effectiveness.

Sure, it's a film whose spell I can imagine being instantly broken the second you remove it from the precise context it was made for—in a cinema, with as large an audience as possible, all of them hooting and hollering—but that should hardly be counted as a mark against it.

Band Car , Hardy's YouTube series that served as inspiration for the film