Canadian film-maker Michael Pierro makes his feature debut with this low-to-no-budget sortie, a modern-day Travis Bickle nightmare which, though flawed and in need of some script development, adds up to a pertinent satirical comment on the gig economy and the Waymo-isation of the service industry.
Nathaniel Chadwick has the everyguy role of a Toronto driver working for an Uber-style app, slumped in his hoodie at the wheel, deeply depressed about providing for a partner and baby at home, avoiding calls from his landlord, exhausted and exploited by customers who are rude and throw up in his car. He’d prefer to be paid by the app every day rather than every week but that would mean upgrading to some higher “platinum” level of driver, and paying a non-returnable membership fee which would supposedly entitle him to be first in the queue for jobs and various other questionable perks. He can’t afford it, in an interesting insight into Uber world.
Then a mysterious and high-handed customer gives him his card: would he like to work for a new kind of app-ride service? There are potentially thousands of dollars a night in it for him, but it doesn’t do to ask questions. Our hapless, schlubby hero signs up and instantly realises that this is some sort of illegal courier service; what feels even more sinister and oppressive is that this new app installed on his phone doesn’t give names or addresses or maps, just a series of chillingly blank instructions: “go straight”, “turn left” with fee deductions for the slightest infringement.
What he is expected to do becomes even more bizarre – especially when the app tells him to vacate the driver’s seat and get in the back with the customer – although the movie’s excursion into violence is also where it becomes silly and less interesting. An otherwise diverting exercise in less-is-more film-making.
Self Driver is on digital platforms from 11 May.