By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Jaime M. Callica, Sean Rogerson and Catherine Lough Haggquist
Directed by Brandon Christensen
Written by Ryan Christensen and Brandon Christensen
Shudder
The opening sequence of the found-footage movie BODYCAM is of the type one usually finds closer to the end of films like this. We watch through the cameras worn by police officers Jerome Jackson (Jaime M. Callica) and Bryce Anderson (Sean Rogerson) as they answer a domestic dispute call in the middle of the night that takes them into far more stressful circumstances than they anticipated. Entering a rundown house in the bad part of an unnamed city, they encounter sizable bloodstains and sigils on the wall and a couple of people who seem…well, “odd” would be an understatement. And things go even worse from there.
Even before this setpiece makes it clear, an opening “Warning: The Following Video Contains Graphic Content…” text screen establishes that this will be a horrific takeoff on COPS, the series that began popularizing found footage a decade before THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. This vérité approach has long since passed the point of being a gimmick to existing as its own genre, and while BODYCAM eventually falls back on the familiar, jumpstarting the story the way it does sets it apart from the usual gradual-investigation plotting. Instead, writer/director Brandon Christensen (STILL/BORN, NIGHT OF THE REAPER) and co-scripter Ryan Christensen build their tension out of the aftermath of that lengthy, freakish house call.
Down in the basement of that deteriorating home, things go even further south in ways that Anderson would prefer that no one find out about. A trip to a computer hacker, Espo (Angel Prater), in the back of a surplus store leads only to the revelation that the two cops have disturbed some seriously bad mojo, which has no intention of leaving them alone. A deep hole in the floor of that cellar, with “RISE” painted (in blood?) on the wall above it, leaves little doubt as to the specific nature of the evil they’ve uncovered, and one of the nice things about BODYCAM is that it doesn’t waste time with a lot of exposition telling us what we can already figure out on our own. When a frequently delivered mantra is “You take something from him, he takes something from you,” it’s pretty clear what that will be, which adds to the suspense.
In general, BODYCAM races through its compact 75-minute running time while sufficiently varying its locations without losing the sense of being trapped in an inescapable nightmare. Everywhere Jackson and Bryce go for help or to resolve their plight only succeeds in plunging them deeper into horrific trouble, and the filmmakers have discovered/created a number of evocatively decrepit places in which to set it. The movie does make a little bit of time to address the plight of neighborhoods like the one the duo can’t escape, though the Christensens’ messaging in this part is a little uneasy. Jackson’s mother Ally (Catherine Lough Haggquist), who works with recovering addicts, admonishes the uniformed pair, “You don’t mix well with the people you’re supposed to be helping,” but the “tweakers” who appear throughout BODYCAM are depicted as creepy at best and mindlessly villainous at worst.
Naturalistic performances all around help maintain the you-are-there illusion, while the overuse of postproduction visual glitches is unnecessary, since Clayton Moore’s videography (which occasionally switches to night vision) successfully sells BODYCAM’s titular hook. There are some nifty and original visual effects toward the end of the movie, co-existing with material that isn’t so fresh. Jackson has a tearful, BLAIR WITCH-style address to the camera heading into the final act, which winds up in the same kind of setting and situation as many other found-footage flicks. Fortunately, the getting there delivers enough good and intense moments to make this a worthwhile late-night Shudder watch.
