[Film Review] Dashcam (2021)

Jake Caul (Eric Tabach) is an editor for a New York news programme; his colleagues talk down to him and don’t seem to realise their best reports would be diminished without his technical savvy. He’s working late to piece some official police dashcam footage into a news report about the death of Attorney General Lieberman (Larry Fessenden) when he happens to receive evidence which shows the story is not so simple. Dashcam is a small-scale but no less tense thriller about the nature of truth, the importance of minor players and the risks of investigative journalism. All that, and yet it takes place over one night.

Tabach is perfect as Caul, who is the only character for most of the film; when he is not, he is either observing others or talking to others, always remotely. That seems to come more naturally to him than engaging with other people, and although his girlfriend encourages him to “get out there” in order to generate news reports of his own, it’s easy to wonder if it will ever happen. He speaks boldly and enthusiastically when he discovers something worth sharing, but only to his own bathroom mirror. Writer-director Christian Nilsson has created a character here who is easy to understand and sympathise with (we feel his ups and downs) and the initial twenty minutes or so spent setting up his overtime, while his friends get ready for a Halloween party, is time well spent.

Perhaps you remember the palpable anxiety in Coppola’s The Conversation, in which Gene Hackman’s Harry Caul agonises over how to respond to the dialogue he picks up in his surveillance tapes. Nilsson clearly remembered it: Caul’s name wasn’t the only aspect he carried forward, but that near-constant tension too. I was on the edge of my seat watching Dashcam, from very early on; as soon as the nature of the news report he was working on and the public’s interest in a conspiracy became apparent, I was as keen to see the new evidence as Caul was. Most of the film was presented in real time, with annoying doorbells, waiting for downloads and watching his expression change as he adjusted filters and effects in order to pick up speech from messy audio files; in this way, we experience so much of the night with Caul, almost down to his very heartbeat (as reflected in Nicholas Marks’ score).

When we’re not watching Caul, we’re watching his computer screen; that is, either his work or his FaceTime calls. Indeed, the film opens with the prepared clip of the news presenter talking about the shooting, ready for Caul to insert the dashcam footage when he has it ready. Like many of us over the last eighteen months or so, the computer screen is where Caul lives his life (though it wouldn’t surprise me if his life was conducted in a similar way before the pandemic), so we see more of that screen (or Caul sitting in front of it) than any other part of his home. This isn’t to say that the computer is another character (as in Searching); it’s very effectively presented so that we see his work and his home just as Caul does himself. We can almost hear his thoughts about what he is piecing together, and it’s perfectly understandable when he checks to see if there is someone keeping an eye on his building. I became sufficiently paranoid on Caul’s behalf that I wondered at times whether those views of him working that we were occasionally granted from odd angles were there to demonstrate that there were spy cameras monitoring him, possibly from under his monitor.

Dashcam is not a long film, nor a fast-paced or action-packed film. Yet it is gripping, intriguing and ultimately satisfying. That’s not to say it delivers neat answers; if it did, it would have been much less satisfying to me. The film reminds us that what we see or hear on the news may not be entirely true. It also asks the viewer to consider that whatever they see or hear is possibly just a small part of something bigger, just as whatever they do could be seen within a bigger picture too

Dashcam is also notable for being a “pandemic movie” which is not about life during the pandemic. The period first became apparent to me (having assumed it was shot a couple of years ago) when the Halloween party was under discussion and most people were going to be attending on screen only. I can only assume it was set during a tentative period when a lockdown was being lifted, but when many people were taking their time in getting used to that: Caul left his flat with mask and gloves, and encountered very few people in the street. The distrust and suspicion in Dashcam’s subject matter fits very neatly into that 2020 setting, especially coupled with Caul’s obvious reluctance to leave his home. I don’t know if I’m seeing something which isn’t really there (which Caul himself had to look out for in the film), or if Nilsson knowingly reflected the mood of his world in this film. Either way, Dashcam is an enjoyable and thought-provoking thriller, and I’m looking forward to finding out what Nilsson has in store next.

Dashcam is available On Digital October 19 from Kamikaze Dogfight and Gravitas Ventures.

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