The Gist: A very annoying woman agrees to take a weird woman somewhere and crazy found footage shit happens.

Anyone Famous In It? Unless you seen this director’s previous film Host, no.

How I Watched It: Streaming on Hulu

So, What Happened? Director Rob Savage made a very interesting film in 2020 called Host. The entire movie was filmed over Zoom and in the actor’s actual apartments because the film was being made, and took place, during the pandemic. Host ending up being pretty popular and people praised Savage for making a fresh take of a horror movie, so people were dying to know what he was going to do next.

We didn’t have to wait much longer. Just a year later, he debuted his latest film Dash Cam to film festivals and people were going nuts. I ended up following the director on Twitter and kept seeing ads for it and I couldn’t wait to see it. And I’m glad I finally saw it.

We meet a woman named Annie Hardy, who does a live stream of her driving in her car while singing songs and using suggestions from her live audience watching her do this. Annie is also a Trump supporter, hates liberals, and thinks this “covic” is made up. Don’t even get her started on masks.

Annie, who is American, flies to London to meet up with her friend Stretch, nicknamed that because he’s tall but Annie has a different story. Stretch lives with his ultra-liberal girlfriend Gemma, who may or may not be the same Gemma from Host as she is played by the same actress AND was also called Gemma in that film.

Stretch does Door Dash-style deliveries and Annie goes along just to be annoying. I only mention this because this figures into how the plot happens. Annie starts a fight with a restaurant owner for not wearing a mask and gets Stretch in trouble. This pisses off Gemma, who wants to kick Annie out. Annie, not one to go down without a fight, steals Stretch’s car and phone. When his phone gets a notification for a food pick up, Annie decides to go with the intention of stealing the food.

Instead, she finds a closed restaurant and the owner in the back doing something weird. The owner pays Annie a good sum of money if she could drive this old woman named Angela to an address. Annie, not one to turn down large sums of money, accepts. Angela doesn’t seem to be all there and is silent.

While driving to the destination, Angela ends up shitting herself so Annie takes her to a bathroom to clean her up. Then a weird woman shows up with a shot gun intent on killing either Angela or Annie. It’s not clear at the start.

Here’s where I’m gonna give a bit of criticism. This film does the typical “found footage so we’re gonna shake the camera to hide our effects and something happened that you couldn’t see but take our word for it, it was really fucking cool!” Because Annie runs out of the restaurant, leaving Angela behind, but Angela ends up in the car somehow.

I suppose this was suppose to build mystery because Angela does a lot of wacky things throughout this movie: she stands on a branch way high up in a tree, she runs after a car that’s going 80, she flies out of water, and so much more.

We don’t know what’s going on with Angela except for the following things: her mouth was stapled shut but she rips them off and has giant rows of teeth in her head, she can appear and disappear at will, and she’s actually a 16-year-old girl who aged incredibly since that morning.

Stretch catches up to Annie, pissed about his car and phone being stolen when he’s caught up in the chase. Angela and the woman with the shot gun chases them both through the woods and then my second complaint of the film occurs: the movie gets a bit repetitive. Either they’re running around in the woods or they get into a car crash. It literally bounces back and forth like that, woods, car crash, woods, car crash, abandoned amusement park, car crash. All the while Angela shows up and either bites Annie or Stretch or rips their flesh off.

The woman with the shot gun finds them but Annie breaks her arm and locks it through the driver side window and into the steering wheel and tries to question the woman (in her own sweet unique way) about Angela. But Angela finds them and decapitates the woman with the shot gun and chases Annie and Stretch.

Stretch is killed in the amusement park and Annie runs from Angela and ends up in a fancy house. It at first appears that nobody is at home but then she discovers this is the same house she was suppose to take Angela to. WHAT ARE THE ODDS?!?!

Annie is faced with a horde of creepy looking guys, all who slit their throats at the same time. Angela appears and some giant white creature crawls out of Angela’s mouth and gives chase to Annie through the house and into the basement. Annie finds a car with the keys in the ignition and manages to drive off, oddly enough not getting into a car accident and then that’s really it.

The woman who played Annie Hardy, also named Annie Hardy, raps the names in the credits and you’ve never heard so many dick/ball/pussy/cum/fart/asshole jokes and rhymes IN YOUR LIFE!! Hmm…Annie Hardy played Annie Hardy….I hope the real Annie Hardy isn’t a Trump loving anti-vaxxer.

One thing I want to mention before I wrap up is HOW this film is present to us. I mentioned it’s found footage but that’s not exactly right. It’s from the, well, “dash cam” that’s streaming live on Annie’s….Twitch? YouTube? It’s never said. And along the side of the screen are comments from people watching everything unfold and the comments are very much like real comments people would make, especially if the person on stream was a Trump fan. And it was full of people saying “SHOW US YOUR TITS” and Annie played along with this but surprisingly, not showing them her tits. There were moments where because either they were dead center in the woods or Angela’s weird powers were causing issues, but the live stream would be off and that is when the REAL crazy shit happened. This was an interesting use of “found footage” that was similarly used in Open Windows, a movie starring Elijah Wood and Sasha Grey and directed by Nacho Vigalondo, who also directed one of my favorite time travel movies Timecrimes. If you haven’t, go see Open Windows. You won’t regret it.

Final Thoughts: A lot of crazy shit happens in this movie, it’s gory as fuck, and the lead actress is a foul mouth who LOVES saying “dick in my ass” or “cum on my tits”. So obviously, I love it!! I’m not sure what the reason was to make Annie a Trump supporter unless it was to prove “yeah, those assholes can never die, even if they get into a million car accidents and get clawed by a lady possessed by a giant alien bug creature thing.” But I enjoyed it, it was funny in parts, creepy in others, made me grossed out a few scenes, and was overall a fun experience. Highly recommend.

Rating: 4 out of 5.