DASHCAM

UK/US, 2021, 77 minutes, Colour.

Annie Hardy, Amar Chadha-Patel, Angela Enahoro.

Directed by Rob Savage.

All the ingredients of a horror film. There is a great deal of blood and gore for audiences for whom this is an appeal. There are all kinds of weird supernatural elements. And, it is in the vein of the Blair Witch films with handheld camera and found footage.

This is a small-budget film, rather unpolished, which will appeal only to those who will identify with the qualities indicated. But, it may be too much for many an audience (most audiences), its appeal limited to diehard fans.

One of the difficulties/attractions is the central character, an extraordinarily unattractive character, singer, rapper, driving her car, moving to London, finding an old friend, and becoming involved in all the bizarre violent situations. And he is continually commenting, focusing her face, for her many social media followers. She encounters an old woman, ill, who introduces the theme of the demonic with a great number of apparitions, attacks, unexplained characters, absolute mayhem from which she generally emerges.

One of the distinguishing features of the film is that the footage is part of her online program, the film indicating most of the time the attitude of her followers, too quick for the audience to be able to read all of them as they scroll through, but enough to raise questions about why so many people are watching, what their attitudes are towards the woman, towards the demonic, towards credibility – and a whole lot of misogynist comments, crass comments, brawling focus references…

Which means that the film would be useful in media and psychological testing, getting a wide range of audiences, especially younger audiences, to discover what appeals to them and what doesn’t, to test social media sensibilities and sensitivities (and some moral implications).

This would indicate response to visualising blood and gore and excesses of blood and gore, to course and gross and crass language, especially groin fixations, anatomy and sexual functions.

For a cross-section of opinions, as always, these are presented in the IMDb, some fans of this film but others highly critical.