jcx238

.. just the free trial and cancelled when I couldn't figure out how to download it and keep it forever.. had watched and liked Host during the early covid days and later stumbled on this and needed to see it from watching teaser trailers - I found it leaps above Host - the "live" horror moments and effects - the gore and gross-outs - as a whole scarier, weirder, freakier, funner and furiouser.. with the added plus of introducing me to a brand-new crush: I, unlike nearly everyone else whose reviews/opinions/belly-aches I've read regarding this movie - totally fell in love with Annie Hardy who I'd never heard of before and promptly started listening to her music and following her IG all of which only further solidified my total head-over-heels for her.. I'd put her in a movie in a second.. and I thought her kind-of "non-horror-y" ridiculousness worked great against the building dread and increasingly tense, scary situation - and made her freaking out feel kinda.. "real".. I got scared.. and scared for her! She's awesome, Dashcam is awesome - it should have more fans - get seen more - get around more in the horror-fan world..

Pretty much loved this through and through - the blaring pop-punk soundtrack - Francis Raines' believable acting/characterization - the weird off-kilter blend of the banal and truly bizarre - the use of real apartments/clubs/videostore/Waterbury streets in which it all takes place - guaranteeing nothing feels like a "cheap set" despite (and/or because of it) being a low-budget production.. there's great choices being made all over the place here including a plethora of odd-ball, random little details - like shrimp newberg for dinner (!?!) - realizing she lives right across the street from the cemetery - or the ridiculous Groucho Marx statue in her apartment (that takes on a truly creepy demeanor at one point) - make it much richer a watch than expected and not just a by-the-books/let's-make-a-buck exploitationer.. and when it shifts from being (mostly) "I know where this is going" into something darker, more sinister and more somewhat incomprehensible - it manages to become truly frightening and nightmarish.. and that cacophonous noise coming out of her phone is pretty darn unsettling.. all of the reviews I read (positive or negative) pointed out a particular shot as a complaint towards being amateurish - a shot that actually had me almost leaping outta my seat thinking how bold and beautiful a choice it was - and it doesn't feel out of place in a movie that is doing a lot of things its own way.. Director Bechard's Psychos In Love is probably better known - possibly better regarded - than Disconnected - but I found this one to be more enthralling, more particular, more interesting - and less straining to be funny or quirky.. and in the words of the Disconnected nice-guy-but-a-serial-killer, Franklin's trade-mark sign-off that I got a kick out of once I realized he was going to keep saying it: "ok - see ya - bye"..

(so far) my favorite of these Ryan Callaway micro-budget, handmade, homegrown horrors - inspirational filmmaking that shows what a person can do with creativity, imagination and commitment with a close-knit crew/cast just as committed to it - they're rough around the edges and maybe not everything works - but more exciting in their idiosyncrasies than the pre-processed, factory-made, easy-to-swallow blandness of the same-old-same-old.. there's some weird and creepy stuff going on in these movies - with an off-kilter blend of strange naturalism and stranger anti-realism and a kind of organic randomness that gives them a kind of believability - mixed with familiar, classic horror tropes - from "real-world" horrors, stalker/slasher horror, lost-in-the woods scares - to the fantastical like Satan worshiping cults and demons.. I somehow stumbled onto this one and then watched 2 more -The Ghost In The Darkness and Let's Not Meet - all three are connected and work off of each other - dealing in different ways with the same "mythology" that runs through them - like world-building on a small, personal, do-it-yourself scale.. not without flaws and shortcomings - but the sheer individual-ness of these have me hoping to be able to track down some more of them.. Biggest gripe with Let's Not Meet In The Woods: the too-brief scene on the boardwalk of what looked to be a favorite Jersey Shore beach town of mine left me wanting to see more of it - but they promptly went and split for woods of the title instead..