DAGR *** UK 2024 Dir: Matthew Butler-Hart. 77 mins
When it comes to watchable entries in the incredibly oversaturated found-footage genre, the UK isn’t a country that necessarily comes to mind. Once in a blue moon, there is the usual exception like Rob Savage’s pandemic-era Zoom meeting debut Host. Now, that 2020 indie has an equal (if not better) competitor with Matthew Butler-Hart’s devilishly delightful horror comedy Dagr.
Once you look past Dagr’s eyebrow-raising executive producer credits (Sir Ian McKellen and Conleth Hill aka Lord Varys from Game of Thrones), you will see that this is a tightly knit independent venture tied on a shoestring budget. But haven’t some of the best found footage horrors come out of financial constraints?
Shot in around two weeks on nothing but an iPhone, Dagr follows two Robinhood-styled social media influencers (cheekily named Thea and Louise) driving down to a lonely countryside mansion for an ad shoot. The modus operandi of these perpetually-recording, phone-addicted, Gen-Z-ers? To rob the filming crew’s treasure trove of fancy clothes and handbags. Our heroines might be attention-seeking narcissists but they help the poor to rake up their views.
Thankfully, the mise-en-scène isn’t a dilapidated Gothic wasteland but a country house believable enough to accommodate an artsy fashion campaign. But once the influencers have reached their destination, they chance upon some footage of the filming crew who had set foot here moments before them.
Voyeurism is amped up a notch as the iPad recordings, in turn, reveal the crew’s reactions on watching a grainy VHS-style video diary by an occult expert who ends up revealing more information about a Druid sorcerer from ages ago. Yes, if it wasn’t obvious till now that Dagr plays around with multiple timelines and a film-within-a-film narrative, the protagonists will foreshadow it all with an Inception namedrop in the first half.
Dagr, titled so after the Welsh variation on the word “dagger”, takes its sweet time to stab you with the expected found-footage theatrics. Keeping the jump scares as minimum as possible in his semi-improvised chiller, co-writer and director Matthew Butler-Hart is adept at weaving an old-meets-new take on his chosen subgenre.
Despite an easily digestible runtime of 77 minutes, the pacing might waver a bit and test the audience’s patience. But the finale pays off with convincing shaky cam thrillers and enough future potential for a sequel (or who knows a sequel because going down the rabbit hole of Druid-era horror can be as dark as period horrors on the Salem Witch trials).
With even a “blood cult chorus” credited among the music in the endcredits, Dagr boasts impressive sound design with some ancient Welsh throat-singing being even more goosebump-inducing than the nocturnal camera scares. The scared howls of the cast-members, on the other hand, are turned down with convincing performances from the well-cast duo of Riz Moritz and Ellie Duckles as the two ill-fated protagonists. Call this critic sadistic but it’s oddly entertaining to see these ever-babbling influencers reducing their volume as Dagr’s dreadful events unfurl.
Co-writer and producer Tori Butler-Hart is equally enjoyable in a supporting part as the ad shoot’s chatty Fellini-inspired, 8mm camera-armed director.
All in all, Dagr might not break new ground in the found-footage genre but it’s effective enough for its limited runtime, considering the many influences and storylines it dares to take one by one. A pinch of the Blair Witch recipe is imminent but it has enough going on to stand on its own.
Also, watch out for an unnerving feather mask!
Review by Shaurya Thapa
DAGR comes out on Digital release on 8th April 2024