Main: Annie Hardy finds she has more to worry about than traffic lights.
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ROB SAVAGE’S LOCKDOWN-horror smash Host could easily have been a one-off: a freak DIY movie, shot using Zoom at the height of Covid by a small, enterprising team for next to no money, with stunning results. But for Savage, Host was just the beginning. The film earned the director a three-picture deal with Blumhouse (the indie-horror studio behind The Purge and The Invisible Man), and now he’s back, reunited with co-writers Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd, and playing in a bigger slayground, with Dashcam.
As the title suggests, it’s another foundfootage film, but interestingly it is also related to the pandemic. “Though we had this idea pre-lockdown, we thought it would be a great companion-piece to Host, because it’s about going back into the world and wondering if things are safe still,” Savage tells us. “That was the pitch to Blumhouse. We wanted to plant a flag and say, ‘This is how it felt to be around during this stage of the pandemic,’ but to do it through horror and not be pretentious about it. It’s halfway between a Ti West movie and a Louis Theroux documentary.” He laughs. “God knows if it’ll work. It’s not gonna be like anything else.”
The film — shot entirely on an iPhone, either attached to a car dashboard, or a character’s head — focuses on musician Annie Hardy (a friend of the filmmakers), playing a heightened version of herself. With all her gigs cancelled, she starts a livestream show where she performs while driving around LA. In an effort to escape California’s lockdown, she visits England, where she helps out an elderly lady (Angela Enahoro) with a lift. But it turns out her passenger is contending with a supernatural demonic force.