DASHCAM or Why Does Blumhouse Keep Secrets?
If you’ve been watching movies for a while like I have then you will notice there are some familiar names, some familiar faces that are always associated with good movies. We recognize Cannon Group for their over the top action movies in the ‘80s like Over the Top. We recognize New Line Cinema for just about every ‘90s movies that was a little too ‘90s for it’s own good like The Faculty. The name A24 brings to mind an air of artsy ambition and Blumhouse is the name we associate with modern horror. There’s just one problem:
Jason Blum and his buddies keep secrets.
Oh yeah, I’m onto these suspicious fuckers. See look, they produce notable movies like Get Out, Us and The Invisible Man but they also have this strange tendency to just under the radar release a film with absolutely no promotion or fanfare around it. For instance, do you remember 2019’s Sweetheart? You know, the one about the girl with way too many bikini’s stranded on an island like Tom Hanks but instead of the biggest issue being a toothache, the biggest issue is a creepy booger monster that comes out of a hole in the ocean floor? Yeah, this was a Blumhouse film that they just dropped on Netflix and didn’t tell anyone about it. For those who accidentally stumbled upon the movie it accidentally stumbled upon their Top 10 horror movies of the year. Another film that lands firmly in the category of “Jason Blum produced it but ain’t advertising it” is 2022’s DASHCAM.
Now you may be thinking, “Jason Blum and Blumhouse produce a a lot of movies, can’t keep track of all of them” and I understand that logic but this film was directed by Rob Savage who also directed the 2020 smash hit Host. That film was literally everywhere and you might have thought that the world would be clamoring for the directors next film and that he would get a budget and a fancy release and all that stuff.
Nope. Nothing. Not so much as an advertisement. In fact, as I am writing this review, the film is not available on any streaming services and as far as I can tell the only way to watch it is to rent it in DVD quality on RedBox which is an absolute shame because this movie is absolutely incredible. Well, guess what Jason Blum, I don’t have any streaming service because I live in the woods but you know what I do have? A RedBox at the Circle K down the road from my house and I watched your secret movie. Here is the review.
Dashcam stars Annie Hardy as…Annie Hardy, an internet celebrity of sorts. Her gimmick is she drives around in her car and freestyle raps all the while live streaming on Facebook or something. Her viewers are supposed to comment IN ALL CAPS a word or phrase and she will on the fly work it into her rap. The movie takes places during the COVID pandemic and Annie is a bit of a conspiracy theorist. She believes that COVID was made up by the government as a means to take control, she wears a MAGA hat, says some pretty wild, weird and off color things and even goes so far as to get in a fight with a guy about wearing her mask indoors. For some unknown reason, she decides to fly to England to hang out with her buddy and former band mate Stretch, but tensions rise when the right-winger conspiracy theorist clashes with Stretch’s ultra-liberal, COVID sensitive girl friend. The whole thing blows up one night when the girlfriend finds Annie’s MAGA hat and kicks her from their flat. Annie, being the wild person that she is, steals Stretch’s car and finds his phone in the car and starts taking his Uber orders to get a little extra money. During one of these orders she is offered a bunch of money to drive a very sick, very old woman with an Ariana Grande tattoo on her hip to some weird undisclosed location. At first she is hesitant but eventually Annie agrees so she drives around, rapping to her online viewers until the woman starts urinating and shitting in the back seat of the car. Annie takes her to a truck stop and a woman with a shotgun shows up and suddenly, the old woman starts to display supernatural abilities and that’s when shit goes sideways.
Annie’s gimmick is that she drives around and freestyle raps adding in random words that viewers put in ALL CAPS in the chat. This movie seems like someone did that in the writing room. As if someone was writing just a plain old creepy old woman story and someone shouted DEMON POSSESSION so the writers incorporated that and then someone else yelled ALIENS and the writers had to quickly pivot again. Other words shouted during this film also include CREEPY CARNIVAL, CULTS, BOOGER MONSTERS and TIME TRAVEL. Now these may all seem like unrelated items but when you are watching Annie and Stretch run through an abandoned House of Mirrors while being chased by a super powered granny who actually is a 17 year old who aged rapidly for unknown reasons with an unknown connection to a mysterious doomsday cult, you will see that it works, just like Annie’s car raps.
Now onto Annie. Look, this might be the best “final girl” in recent memory. Granted, there are a lot of boring reviews on Letterboxd complaining about how she is a MAGA supporter and this movie “platforms harmful ideas” but I tell you what, the same internet weirdos that say that would also call her a “Mary Sue” or whatever, if she was more badass. She’s flawed as fuck. She’s batshit crazy, she cusses way too much, she’s never serious, even when facing down the barrel of a shotgun while granny flies around drooling black blood. Sure she says the vaccine is fake but also, instead of running and screaming like a baby, she yells things like “Oh shit on my tits” and calls the monster a “semen demon”. The best of all is when the dust settles and she’s gone through all the blood and gore and intense situations she is put in….what does she do? Cry as the sun comes up knowing she has defeated ultimate evil? Does she grow as a character and decided to be less of an abrasive dickhead? No! She lights a cigarette and starts rapping the dirtiest rap lyrics you ever heard in your entire life to the few remaining people watching her live stream. It’s epic. She’s amazing and we need more unapologetic weirdo female main characters in film and she is the perfect example of how to do it right.
Overall, this was one hell of a ride. The story is absolutely bat shit insane. The ride the film takes you on from weird location to weird location is fully epic. It’s technically a “found footage” horror film but there are tons of times when you might be thinking, who is holding the camera? Or why is that person holding the camera? Leave that aside, it’s more of an immersive horror film or a first person horror film. Either way, the filmed on iPhone aspect of this film really turns up the intensity. The gore is present, extreme and in your face. The jump scares are all over the place. The comedy fits as it’s mostly Annie’s personality and of course, there’s Annie Hardy. Our modern day lady Jack Burton just trusting her reflexes and rapping into a funky rainbow colored kid’s microphone.
10 out of 10
5 stars
Find a RedBox and watch it ASAP
