Notable Cast: Nathanael Chadwick, Reece Presley, Lauren
Welchner, Christian Aldo, Harold Tausch
I’m not sure that companies like Uber or Lyft would
appreciate the terms' Uber Horror” or “Lyft Horror,” but I’m unsure what else
would be more fitting for a film like Self Driver. Saturated in a luscious
score, lo-fi and drastically intimate camera shots, and a tense build that ends
up sucking its viewers in, Michael Pierro’s Self Driver is the kind of
indie thriller darlings that always end up cutting through during a film
festival. It’s niche enough that it might be a harder sell for distributors if
it gets picked up for a more significant release, but it’s the kind of strange
and off-kilter film that we strive to find at Blood Brothers Film Reviews. It’s
nuanced genre cinema of the best type and will definitely be a highlight of
Panic Fest 2025.
Told almost exclusively from the car of the ‘VRMR’
driver—again, think of it as the equivalent of Uber or Lyft—Self Driver
is the kind of intimate thriller one only finds in the indie sector. Mostly
that’s because Self Driver needs to be ultra-confident to pull off the
narrative, and it absolutely is.