‘Dashcam’

Rent or buy it on Google Play, Vudu or Amazon. 

Who would have thought my pulse would race watching a guy work on his home computer during the pandemic? That’s what happened during this taut conspiracy thriller written and directed by Christian Nilsson. (Don’t confuse it with the other new horror film called “Dashcam.”) 

It’s Halloween night, and Jake (an intense Eric Tabach) is a video editor working out of his New York City apartment on a local TV news story about a fatal traffic stop that involved a police officer and a former state attorney general. When Jake gets an email from the state’s press office marked “Confidential,” he opens it to find dashcam evidence suggesting that what happened on the road that night might have been an assassination.

The spooked-out Jake, who dreams of being a reporter, leaves his apartment to look for a clue he thinks is hidden in Washington Square Park. But what’s with the car idling outside his apartment?

Nilsson has cited Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation” as an inspiration, and it shows. “Dashcam” is at its creepiest when just audio and video clips, and Jake’s surgical adjustments to them, steer the paranoia-driven story. Over 82 unnerving minutes, Nilsson squeezes big suspense out of seemingly throwaway moments, as when Jake just sits and listens to audio tracks. The muted underscoring that sounds like it’s coming from the next apartment adds a sinister sonic edge.

Featuring Fessenden as “the Attorney General”