Director Brandon Christensen delivers found-footage horror in Bodycam.
Bodycam (2026) is a tense viewing experience from start to finish, with writer/director Brandon Christensen (Night of the Reaper, Still/Born) diving into the shaky-cam realm of the found-footage horror genre. Making great use of shadows and the limited perspective the titular bodycams bring to scene set-ups, this is another decent outing for the director. Whether or not the ending resonates with viewers is up for debate, but the journey is worthwhile.
Guiding the audience’s eyes in Bodycam are Officer Jackson (Jaime M. Callica) and Officer Bryce (Sean Rogerson). It’s supposed to be an ordinary night out for the two police officers patrolling the neighborhood when they get a call about a domestic disturbance. What should have been a simple call instead stokes anxiety, with the officers growing increasingly nervous as they conduct their cursory walk-through of the house. It all culminates in a tragic incident, prompting Office Bryce to immediately go into damage control. Unfortunately, his instinctive action triggers a cascading series of events that haunts both officers until the film’s end.
Clocking in at just 75 minutes, Bodycam is a well-paced, frenetic ride from start to finish. The pacing is key to selling the intensity of everything around. Even when the police officers have moments of brief respite peppered throughout, there is an underlying current of anxiety festering, waiting for the next ball to drop. And when it does, we must sprint with the characters as they race against time. To maintain this pace, though, a couple of introduced story points get sacrificed, making the story less tight overall.
Certain storylines deserved more attention.
There’s no denying that Bodycam is timely, with a focus on police corruption and addiction infiltrating communities with little recourse; the latter is arguably the weaker of the two story focuses. Shot in an almost first-person perspective (off-center due to the bodycam angle), the scenario adds an extra layer of baked-in tension to an already intense situation. Alternating between the two characters’ bodycams, we see what they see and how they react to the ever-evolving situation. As the instigating officer, Officer Bryce draws more of the focus in the lead-up to the film’s final act, with Officer Jackson sometimes relegated to serving as the audience’s eyes.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there are areas where the character’s writing could have been stronger. When the story introduces the information early on that Jackson used to live in the neighborhood the two men are now patrolling, along with the segment in Jackson’s mother’s (Catherine Lough Haggquist) house, there was an opportunity to add weight and stakes to Jackson’s return.
If not on paper, this could have been conveyed through Callica’s clear separation from the community in her performance. Instead, what resonates is a missed opportunity that ultimately weakens the film’s ending.
Bodycam (2026) maximizes its scares by allowing the audience to fill in the blanks.
Where Bodycam (2026) maximizes its scares is in its use of physical sets, darkness, and shadows. These fill in the gaps that the audience can conjure in their minds, with every bump and noise intensifying fear. For those who do need the warning, there are moments where the characters run that do shake the camera a bit, so be mindful of motion issues there. And as Bodycam transitions into the film’s final climactic act, the creative use of CGI in a street sequence is videogame-worthy, delivering in full scope the fact that these police officers were always going to be in over their heads once Officer Bryce triggered everything.
Now, there’s no denying the supernatural that slowly takes over and moves Bodycam from a thriller to an all-out horror. However, the final reveal of what is actually puppeteering the “tweakers” of this community opens up discussions about whether it’s necessary to reveal the big bad or leave some things to the imagination. This conversation hinges on the film’s final moments before it cuts to black, giving the audience a full glimpse of what’s taken hold of the community. The philosophy of less is more might have worked better here, but others might feel differently.
The bottom line.
Still, Bodycam (2026) never relents once the police officers set foot into the house. From beginning to end, the tension is palpable. As things move from a serious case of corruption and things gone wrong to something otherworldly emerging to hunt these two men down. While the film’s final act is shaky in its delivery, there’s no denying that it never stops delivering a wild ride. And as a general tip, I do recommend watching this with subtitles, as the audio effects in the film’s second half, particularly involving certain characters, can be hard to follow for those with auditory issues.
Bodycam (2026) is available on Shudder starting February 13, 2026. Watch the trailer below.
Images courtesy of Shudder.
REVIEW RATING
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Bodycam (2026) - 7/10
7/10
