Written and directed by Christian Nilsson
Starring Eric Tabach, Larry Fessenden, Zachary Booth, and Giorgia Whigham
Runtime: 1 hour and 22 minutes
Available October 19th

by Emily Maesar, Staff Writer

Dashcam is a shockingly popular title for horror/thriller films this year, it seems. The one that premiered at TIFF earlier this year, from director Rob Savage (of Host fame) seems like it’s being told entirely as found dashcam footage. Christian Nilsson’s Dashcam, however, takes its name not from the film style it’s imitating, but from the fact that some police dashcam footage is the jumping off point for our thriller.

And thrilling it certainly is. Set in New York sometime during the pandemic, Dashcam is about a news editor named Jake (Eric Tabach). He’s working from home in his small studio apartment, but has dreams of being an on camera reporter. His boss is a dick, but they’re working on a piece about a former attorney general getting into a shootout with a police officer where they both died.

The film takes place, largely, in Jake’s apartment and on his computer screen. The thriller nature of the story is very similar to Searching, but if they’d done it as a mix of filming styles, rather than entirely on screens. And it really works. Editing is key to this film feeling right and Terence Krey does a great job at transitioning between screen recordings of Jake on calls and editing footage in Premiere, and him losing it in his apartment. Not to mention the way that cinematographer Dave Brick is able to shoot inside this tiny apartment is outstanding. It feels claustrophobic, for sure, but the streets don’t feel any better. All the choices really show off Jake’s mental state at any point in time as the possibility of a conspiracy and cover up floods into his mind. 

It strikes me as a bit odd that Jake would try to get into reporting through editing in a more traditional setting. I say this mostly out of my general knowledge that editing tends to be how a lot of YouTube channel hosts start before getting on camera, which is clearly in Tabach’s purview, given his background as a producer and host at Buzzfeed. Also, Tabach rules in this film. He basically acts to nothing and no one the whole film, but succeeds in carrying the film the way he needs to. 

All-in-all Dashcam is a tight, thrilling ride that uses technology to play with sanity and perception. Can Jake make it to the end of the rabbit hole of answers before time runs out and he’s out of a job? There's a very specific timeline established for when Jake is supposed to turn in the news package with the supplied dashcam footage. So maybe the long takes about using Premiere might be kind of inaccessible to people who aren’t like me (I work in post production by trade), but this film really worked for me. Hopefully other people will find using software to solve a mystery as compelling as I did.