An ambitiously gimmicky horror cratered by a single casting decision buckles up for a bumpy ride on streaming

Having delivered what was designated as the scariest movie in the history of cinema by no less of an authority than science itself, filmmaker Rob Savage faced a tough task succeeding breakout hit Host. Thanks to the circumstances created by the pandemic, another screen-based nightmare was the best option available, only for DASHCAM to split opinion straight down the middle.

Whereas his previous feature was drowning in critical acclaim, respective Rotten Tomatoes scores of only 48 and 35 percent from reviewers and audience members made it clear that lightning had failed to strike twice. One recurring thread that quickly became established as the number one issue almost everybody had with the movie was the performance of star Annie Hardy, which is entirely fair.

Either charismatic and bluntly hilarious or grating and insufferable depending on your personal preference, the motor-mouthed lead’s constant sardonic narration grew real old very quickly among a lot of viewers, even when Savage allowed chaos to reign supreme through a string of blood-soaked and jarring sequences where the horrors took center stage.

Regardless of whether or not you boarded the DASHCAM hate train, one thing that can’t be denied is that it’s enjoying a new lease of life on streaming, with FlixPatrol naming it as one of the top-viewed features on ViaPlay around the world. Savage dived headlong into more classical narrative territory with The Boogeyman following his one-two of screen-only stories, but the ghost of Annie Hardy will retrospectively continue to haunt the film, because that’s how divisive it proved to be.