Movies
[TIFF Review] Screenlife Horror ‘DASHCAM’ Aims for Manic Splatstick Chaos
Director Rob Savage captured that trapped feeling of lockdown with last summer’s buzziest horror movie, Host, a Zoom séance gone wrong. It established Savage as a filmmaker who wears his horror influences on his sleeves. His latest, filmed during the second lockdown, demonstrates that once again. Savage’s follow-up feature, DASHCAM, aims to achieve Sam Raimi levels of splatstick energy. It nails manic chaos, but the screenlife format hinders its success.
DASHCAM frames its story through a popular Livestream, Band Car, an improv music show in which an indie musician (Annie Hardy playing a dialed-up version of herself) comes up with songs on the spot while driving around in her car. The songs pull from Annie’s live feed commenters, and she’s the precise type of loud, obnoxious online persona that induces instant cringe. Her exaggerated, over-the-top persona masks a depression over her pandemic life, and she decides to relocate to London to stay with a former bandmate. While out on the road working a food delivery shift, Annie gets stuck with a sickly older woman, propelling her and her online viewers into a high-octane chase that gets increasingly wilder by the hour.
Unlike the more stable camerawork that Host brought, everything captured on screen here comes from Annie’s live feed on her phone. When it’s fixed to her vehicle dashboard, it’s easy to focus on what’s in the fame. But Annie brings her phone with her everywhere, and the events of the evening often require her to leave the car repeatedly. It means she’s zipping along from set piece to set piece. The more Savage attempts to channel Evil Dead levels of splatstick, the more it becomes difficult to see what’s happening. If you’re prone to motion sickness, the shaky cam will trigger it early on, and it only gets worse the more Annie’s night turned into an unrelenting series of demonic horror.
Savage, who co-wrote the feature with Host’s Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd, leaves viewers in the dark as much as Annie for what’s happening. She’s stuck with a stranger that won’t go away, which causes a series of action horror sequences and a whole lot of various bodily fluids splattering across backseats, pavement, restaurants, abandoned carnivals, and more. The set pieces themselves are inspired when you can see them, as Annie’s phone erratically bounces about as she runs from danger. All of that still sounds cool, in theory, but its execution and limited scope of vision make DASHCAM feel like a disconnected series of incredible horror moments rather than a coherent narrative. It doesn’t help that you’re more eager to be rid of the selfish and anarchic Annie than you are her passenger.
Much like Host, there’s social commentary to be found on our current state of things nestled in the details; what it’s saying gets muddled by Annie’s Livestream persona. The MAGA hat that she dons, her wall full of crucifixes before heading for London, or a brief flash of a Trump bobblehead- it’s not clear if DASHCAM is commenting on America itself or Americans. The entire setup sees its extremely impolite American crashing the pad of her polite London pal in the rudest manner possible, then dragging him into the danger against his will. So, the message likely reads the same regardless. You can find other connections to Host sprinkled throughout, some obvious and some deeper laid Easter eggs.
DASHCAM aspires to achieve the same levels of unbridled mania and nihilism of Evil Dead, or even V/H/S/2, putting its characters through the physical wringer in a nonstop onslaught of visceral terror. Unlike its influences, though, you’re actively rooting against its lead. The more Savage introduces cool ideas or new levels of bold horror, the less you’re able to see it. Much of what works about his latest effort gets obscured by its format. That Annie inspires repulsion is the point, but it doesn’t do DASHCAM any favors either. If you can get past one of horror’s most grating characters in recent memory and a constant barrage of shaky cam, there’s a gem of a splatstick horror movie buried somewhere within. For many, though, it’ll likely earn an unfollow.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
You must be logged in to post a comment.