A grim found-footage horror premise with a strong opening hook, but the movie seems to collapse under its own pileup of cliches, thin plotting, and tone-deaf sensationalism. The format and runtime promise a lean shocker, yet the consensus points to a messy, overextended feature that is more frustrating than… Read more
Bodycam
Where to watch: Buy
Movie · Horror
Thu · 1h 15m
Director: Brandon Christensen
Starring: Jaime M. Callica, Sean Rogerson, Catherine Lough Haggquist
Overview
A call to a quiet suburban home unleashes unthinkable carnage when two officers mistakenly shoot a man and his infant child, spiraling the tragedy into a fierce, unrelenting fall into the unknown.
Director
Brandon Christensen
Cast
Jaime M. Callica, Sean Rogerson, Catherine Lough Haggquist
Curator Review
Verdict
A grim found-footage horror premise with a strong opening hook, but the movie seems to collapse under its own pileup of cliches, thin plotting, and tone-deaf sensationalism. The format and runtime promise a lean shocker, yet the consensus points to a messy, overextended feature that is more frustrating than frightening.
Best for
hardcore found-footage completists
viewers curious about police-bodycam horror concepts
fans of low-budget horror experiments who don’t mind rough edges
Skip if
you want coherent plotting and payoff
you’re sensitive to exploitative material involving children or police violence
you’re looking for genuinely scary or original horror
Overview
Bodycam starts with a brutal, instantly provocative premise: a routine call goes catastrophically wrong, and the film uses bodycam footage to trap us inside the aftermath. That setup has real potential, and the format can create a nasty sense of immediacy when it’s used well. Here, though, the movie appears to keep adding ideas instead of deepening the first one, and the result is more chaotic than cumulative.
Worth noting
The biggest issue is tonal and conceptual overload. What begins as a tense, morally ugly horror scenario reportedly drifts into cult material, creature effects, and other familiar found-footage detours, which blunts the impact of the original tragedy. Instead of sharpening the dread, the film seems to keep reaching for bigger shocks while losing control of its own logic.
Bottom line
There are flashes of effectiveness in the restricted-viewpoint setup and a few isolated scenes that sound genuinely unsettling. But the overall impression is of a feature stretched from a stronger short-form idea, with too many recycled genre beats and not enough substance to justify the runtime. For found-footage devotees only; most viewers should pass.
Top Letterboxd reviews
cob (1★) · 290 likes
expecting the audience to root for corrupt cops is certainly a choice
spectre_howling (0.5★) · 248 likes
Painfully generic and socially tone-deaf dumbass found-footage about a cop shooting an innocent person and a baby...and then trying to cover up the crime and also, a cult and Slenderman stuff for some fucking reason? Yeah, not for me dawg. This shit is a mess on every conceptual level. Horror slop. For a flick barely over an hour, there's barely enough substance here to flesh out a single anthology entry. I would not recommend this even despite its short runtime. This is my third flick from this director and uh, yeah; this one's the last one I'll be watching. 🥱
joe (3★) · 220 likes
genuinely what the actual fuck (affectionately)
Brett Arnold (2.5★) · 204 likes
Banger V/H/S short here. Unfortunately it’s a movie. 75 minutes sounds short but this is actually too long!
Danny (2★) · 161 likes
ACABStumbles into every single found footage cliche going, and while it’s not an entirely bad film, it’s very unoriginal. It feels like a VHS segment, stretched into a feature length film. A shorter, more condensed narrative might have suited it better. The scares are scarce and obvious. The glitchy/distorted effects on the footage have been done a thousand times already. The story is thin and despite the twists and turns, it’s still largely predictable. Still, it’s short, there are… more
2008 · Action, Thriller, Science Fiction · 1h 25m · PG-13 · Where to watch: Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential, Peacock, Peacock Premium Plus
Found-footage spectacle that understands momentum, panic, and urban chaos better than most imitators.