Director Rob Savage had quite the year in 2020. While much of the industry struggled to find its footing amidst the pandemic, he managed to deliver one of the best horror movies of the year -- and one of the best movies of the year period, in my opinion. Host featured a hugely charming ensemble and a narrative that leaning into the lockdown lifestyle in a wildly creative and entertaining manner. Following the success of Host, Savage scored a three-picture deal with Blumhouse. The first film of that deal just premiered at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, and it sparked a mighty fiery response.

DASHCAM shows what happens when the host of a live stream show travels to London and finds herself in the middle of a supernatural nightmare while broadcasting. That host often voices her contempt for COVID safety protocols, puts her friends and others at risk, and displays upsettingly selfish behavior at every turn.

DASHCAM
Image via TIFF

It’s a pretty drastic shift in the protagonist department from Host to say the least, so I had to ask Savage and producer Douglas Cox about it when we got to chat just before DASHCAM’s big debut at TIFF. Here’s what Savage said when asked why he decided to have such a controversial personality as the main character of his film:

“I just think there’s no harm in spending time with people who don’t have the same opinion as you, and I think that at some point in the very near future, we’re gonna hit a wall where there’s gonna be a certain chunk of the population that aren’t gonna get vaccinated and we’re gonna have to live shoulder to shoulder with people who demonstrably don’t share our values, live in a reality that is slightly off from our own. And also, Annie’s playing a much more cartoonish version of herself in this movie. She’s got a genius mind that was key in the same way as on Host; we had this group of friends who had this really nice, natural, easy chemistry that I relied on so much day in, day out when I was shaping the film. Working with Annie, relying on her wit and her spontaneity and her creativity was huge and essential and we wouldn’t have been able to make this film in the way that we did without her. It’s important to talk about Annie I think as a collaborator on this movie and not the subject of this movie. We’re not making a documentary about Annie. She’s a much less abrasive character in real life than she is in the movie.”

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Cox explained that initially, they did debate whether they were going to cast Annie Hardy in the film or find an experienced actor for the role. Savage further explained:

“She actually does this show Band Car, which she drives around and improvises music. When Jed [Shepherd] showed me the show, the first conversations were like, ‘Oh, that’s a cool set-up for a found footage movie,’ and the version we were taking around pre-Host was very much just using the Band Car set-up, but the idea was to probably take it to studios, to probably try and get an actor to play that role. The experience I had working with the cast of Host and really kind of inviting that level of collaboration from the cast made me think, the way to do this movie and to make it something different and something exciting and something a bit dangerous is to fully engage with Annie and let this film carry her personality. The same way that Host, when I think about Host, I think about that group of girls, when I think about DASHCAM I think it really captures the mad chaos of Annie Hardy. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is down to the viewer, but that was the intention going in.”

Rob Savage and Douglas Cox at the Premiere DASHCAM
Image via Blumhouse

Cox went into further detail on the process of getting Hardy ready for her first feature film and figuring out the on-set COVID safety protocols:

“I have a huge amount of respect to Annie for trusting us to work with her in this way. We met obviously virtually. I spent some time with her chatting on Zoom and obviously Gemma [Hurley] and Rob and Jed spent a bunch of time chatting with her and talking through things. It was difficult. We were shooting at a time where a lot of the rules were only just beginning to form in the UK about how we could manifest a production in the middle of COVID. There was lots of changing, fluctuating rules and conditions. We asked a lot of people, Annie included — Annie especially, in fact; she was coming over, there were lots of quarantines, huge amounts of testing going on and I think it was that collaboration again. She fully stepped into our gang for the film and really became a real part of that film family, as you always do with these kinds of shoots.”

Savage also made a point to highlight, “Whatever her beliefs, she followed the testing regimen. We had no cases on the shoot. She was super respectful.”

If you’d like to hear more about Cox and Savage’s experience making DASHCAM, you can check out our full conversation at the top of this article. It also feels necessary to note that while DASHCAM further confirms Savage’s ability behind the lens when crafting chilling set pieces in the screenlife format, I found the decision regarding the main character to be a major misfire. Yes, DASHCAM does capture “the mad chaos of Annie Hardy” as Savage said, and given how that's addressed in the film, I fall on the side of that being a bad thing.

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