A nifty Canadian low budgeter from 2024 that functions as both a cunning psychological thriller and an eccentric horror fest, while making the interior of a car (a notoriously difficult locale to render cinematically) into a compelling setting. The debut feature of Michael Pierro, who accomplished all the major creative tasks on his own, SELF DRIVER handily achieves most everything it attempts.
SELF DRIVER (2024) Trailer
We look in on D (Nathanael Chadwick), a cash-strapped young man working for a ridesharing company, on an apparently normal day. This entails obscene amounts of money blown on gas and much verbal abuse by various annoying people. One of D’s fares, a young man named Nic (Adam Goldhammer), claims to run an underground rideshare outfit that promises to net its drivers $4-5,000 a night. D initially blows off the offer, but that night, after a drunk woman pukes in his car and he’s forced to waste money cleaning up the mess, he decides to contact Nic.
He’s directed to a warehouse district. There he meets Nic, who has him sign onto an app that involves a lengthy terms and conditions page that of course D doesn’t bother reading. The rules are simple: D has to spend the remainder of the night following the dictates of the app, and if he quits before the job is complete he gets no money. He also learns that if he doesn’t follow the app’s directions to the letter his salary is reduced.
D’s first pickup is a young woman (Catt Filippov) with angel wings attached to her back. Based on the dictates of the app, D drops the woman off in a questionable neighborhood where she asks him to wait for her. He agrees, but the app, which appears to know precisely what D is doing at any given time and can seemingly predict the future, demands he leave to pick up another fare, and, against his better instincts, he complies.
I won’t spoil any more of the narrative, which pivots on the unexpected. There’s a consistent focus on issues of complicity, free will and the reach of technology, points that are obviously quite pertinent to our current age (that last one in particular). So too are the film’s other major subjects: drug use and insanity, both of which come to increasingly inform the proceedings.
Pierro makes excellent use of nondescript Toronto locations, which as seen from the vantage point of D’s car assume the status of nocturnal alien landscapes, just as the interior of said car is made into a deeply menacing and oppressive universe in its own right. The filmmaking is montage-heavy, utilizing bizarre angles, distorted lenses and a borderline avant-garde score (courtesy of Antonio Naranjo) while maintaining its grip on the viewer and never feeling pretentious.
Also helping to keep things grounded is the lead performance of Nathanael Chadwick (THE LAST PORNO SHOW). He projects a genuine everyman quality that renders his character’s at-times questionable actions chillingly believable and even somewhat reasonable, which begs a troubling question: would any of us truly act differently?
Vital Statistics
SELF DRIVER
Summo Duo/Cinephobia Releasing
Director/Screenplay/Cinematography/Editing: Michael Pierro
Producers: Kire Paputts, Michael Pierro
Cast: Nathanael Chadwick, Adam Goldhammer, Catt Filippov, Christian Aldo, Reece Presley, Lauren Welchner, Jono Hunter, Sasha Gaponovitch, Adeela Hossenbux, Lindsay Ivan, Christian Aldo, Harold Tausch, Reece Presley, Lauren Welchner, Selena Kang