Whisper House Press

One of the great things about found footage is that there are many different subtypes within the subgenre—home video, surveillance, news footage, to name a few. Brandon Christensen’s (Night of the Reaper (2025), Superhost (2021)) new film focuses on the bodycam footage of two keystone cops—Bryce (Sean Rogerson) and Jackson (Jaime M. Callica, who is probably the acting MVP of the film). Officer Bryce causes a domestic disturbance call to spiral out of control and he and Jackson must then survive against a supernatural threat. 

The concept is solid on paper, but Bodycam feels like a rejected anthology entry from one of the V/H/S movies, only stretched into a feature-length film. I quickly started wondering—and then couldn’t stop wondering—if the officers’ actions were accurate, as far as police work goes. For example, after the film’s inciting incident is caught on camera, the panicked cops leave their cameras on. They explain later in the film that the bodycams were automatically triggered somehow and can’t shut off. That’s all well and good, but even if you couldn’t turn them off, couldn’t you physically remove them? Leave them in your patrol car? Or, better yet, the trunk? This is all made more frustrating by the fact that Officer Bryce desperately wants to cover up the incident. But he just keeps filming.

There were some elements of Bodycam’s plot and world that I enjoyed, but I can’t get into them without spoiling the film’s horror elements. And I did find myself occasionally respecting the film’s vibes. There’s a very unsettling driving scene late in the film in which the patrol car can’t seem to escape the house where the inciting incident occurred. Also, near the film’s climax, there’s some POV footage in some sort of underground warehouse that reminded me of classic found footage. Think of the climax of The Blair Witch Project, where documentarian character Heather Donahue is frantically searching for her friend in the ruins of an old house. This scene also had a sort of “backrooms” feel to it, if that’s your thing. 

Perhaps my biggest annoyance with the film came from one of its characters—Officer Jackson’s mother. The character lives near the incident (Jackson grew up in the neighborhood), and she seems to somehow be knowledgeable of the occult. The officers visit her house for help, Officer Jackson calls her at least one other time in the film for advice, and she’s generally built to be a strong, smart character. So it’s strange that she proves completely useless at the end of the film during what could have been her big moment. 

All in all, Bodycam mostly offers poor writing and frustrating characters that add up to a subpar found footage film.

Robert Zerbe’s writing has previously appeared in Trembling With Fear and on the Creepy podcast. He has yet to hack his obsessive-compulsive disorder into something useful. Robert lives in Florida with his wife, two children, and love of movies. You can follow him on Bluesky at @runonsandwich.