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PLOT: When two police officers respond to a domestic violence call, their night becomes a living Hell, with their bodycams recording every minute of it.
REVIEW: A few years ago, we got a supernatural horror film called Body Cam, which starred Mary J. Blige. Now, the Shudder streaming service has teamed with one of their favorite modern genre filmmakers, Brandon Christensen (his previous films, Still/Born, Z, Superhost, The Puppetman, and Night of the Reaper, were all released through Shudder) to bring us another supernatural horror film called Bodycam, which has nothing to do with that Blige movie and presents the title as one word instead of two. So when horror fans have text conversations, we’ll know when Body Cam is being referenced and when we’re talking about Bodycam instead. Another way to differentiate between the two: this is “the found footage one.”
Scripted by Brandon Christensen and Ryan Christensen, the new film tells the story of police officers Jackson (Jaime M. Callica) and Bryce (Sean Rogerson), who respond to a domestic violence call in the early hours of October 13, 2025. After making their way past a group of “tweakers” who are reminiscent of the homeless people in John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness in that they linger around and are directly tapped into the horror that ensues, they enter a rundown home that’s infested with rats and has occult symbols drawn on the walls.
The situation gets stranger the further they go into the house. There’s an injured dog in a crib. A mysterious hole in the basement floor. And a couple of people who do not respond to questions or orders. Things don’t go well. Within minutes of entering the home, there are three dead people on the scene and Bryce is having a meltdown because he shot and killed a man. He thought the guy was armed, but he was actually holding a baby. And the whole encounter was recorded on his bodycam.
In fact, almost the entire movie is presented solely through the bodycams worn by Jackson and Bryce, although other angles are shown when they’re in their cruiser. At first, Bryce’s primary concern is how he’s going to destroy the footage from his camera… although, even after he’s worried about that, he’s still dedicated enough to recording everything that he’ll set the detached camera aside in just the right spot to film himself making a bathroom phone call. Then, as it becomes increasingly clear that something supernatural is going on here, Bryce has bigger concerns to focus on.
I’ll be up front: I am not a fan of the found footage style, and when I watch a found footage movie I’m often left feeling that it was either a complete waste of time or that it would have been a better movie if it was shot in the traditional style. A found footage movie has to be really good to win me over – and sometimes they do. Despite featuring good performances from the lead actors, along with Catherine Lough Haggquist and Angel Prater in supporting roles, and having some creepy moments, Bodycam did not win me over.
The film is just 75 minutes long (72 when the end credits start rolling), but it reaches that length by stretching the concept to its absolute limit. Even with such a short running time, it manages to drag and feel both longer than it is and longer than it should have been. Cut it down and make it part of an anthology, and it might have worked better. (And director Alejandro Brugués, working from a script by The Blair Witch Project collaborators Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sánchez, did make something like this for Sam Raimi’s short-lived anthology show 50 States of Fright.)
Bodycam did do some things that I liked. The situation at the house has completely fallen apart by the 12 minute mark, and I was concerned that the whole rest of the movie was going to be Jackson and Bryce stuck at the house, debating the issue and jumping at strange noises. Thankfully, the story does branch out into other locations, eventually allowing for the best, most effective sequence in the movie, which involves Jackson having an unnerving experience while driving through city streets and talking to his mom on the phone.
The movie has plenty of horrific ideas, but I didn’t find the presentation to be very engaging. In the end, things sputter out in the usual found footage movie fashion and I was left underwhelmed.
Bodycam starts streaming on Shudder on March 13th.
