Bodycam (2026): Great Start, Confusing Finish

Some found footage films try to do too much with too little runtime, and Bodycam is a strange case study in what happens when a genuinely strong premise gets buried under its own ambition. For the first half hour, this is one of the better body-cam horror experiments I’ve seen. Then it starts asking more of you than it’s willing to answer.

Bodycam knows exactly what it wants to be for thirty minutes. After that, I’m honestly not sure it does either.

What Bodycam Is About

Two police officers respond to what looks like a routine domestic dispute call. It isn’t. A tragic accidental shooting happens fast — within the first two minutes, in fact — and rather than report it, the officers decide to cover it up. The problem is that their body cameras caught more than the incident itself. Something supernatural has been recorded too, and it doesn’t stay contained to the footage.

At 75 minutes, this is not a film that asks for your whole evening, and it doesn’t waste the runtime it does have. Action starts almost immediately, the premise is easy to grasp, and for a good chunk of the first act, Bodycam is doing exactly what a body-cam found footage film should do.

The Bodycam Trailer

Review: Bodycam (Spoiler-Free)

The first 25-30 minutes of Bodycam are genuinely good. The acting holds up, the premise is clear without over-explaining itself, and there’s none of the bloated exposition that drags down a lot of found footage at this budget level. You don’t need to clear your whole day for this one — which, at 75 minutes, is honestly part of the appeal.

Then, right around the half-hour mark, it starts to unravel. Not in a slow, deliberate way — more like the plot keeps adding layers faster than it’s willing to explain any of them. What starts as a tight, effective premise turns into a puzzle you’re actively working to solve rather than a story you’re sitting back and enjoying. By the second half, I found myself spending more time trying to figure out what was actually happening than reacting to what was on screen.

To be fair, the technical side never lets up. The VFX are solid, the locations are well chosen, and there’s a sequence with the officers driving toward the city — house in the background, streetlights cutting out one by one — that’s one of the better-shot moments in the film.

The body-cam format itself works better than I expected going in. Some viewers have complained it hurts visibility and makes it harder to track what’s happening, but for me, that limitation is exactly what made it effective. I’m genuinely curious to see other films lean into this format going forward.

The bigger issue is the plot itself, which gets more confusing with nearly every scene. And rather than pulling things together, the ending — and the post-credits material after it — adds more questions instead of answering the ones already on the table. I had to piece a lot of it together after the fact; if you want my attempt at making sense of it, I’ve written a full breakdown in Bodycam ending explained.

I understand what Christensen and his team were going for — pushing the script into more meta, layered territory instead of playing it straight. That’s a legitimate instinct, and it’s part of why his films tend to stand out. But here, it feels like they went one layer too deep. The problem isn’t ambition, it’s that the ambition gets in the way of the characters. By the time the film wants you to feel something for the officers at its center, most of your attention has already gone toward just keeping up with what’s going on.

One thing worth noting: the supernatural elements here aren’t especially scary, and I mean that as a genuine compliment. Bodycam isn’t chasing jump scares or dread for its own sake, which is a nice change of pace from a lot of the genre right now.

Verdict

Great start, confusing finish. Bodycam opens with one of the more promising body-cam concepts I’ve seen in the genre — tight, well-shot, and confident in its premise — before spending its second half burying that promise under more plot than it can clearly explain. The cinematography and VFX hold up throughout, and the format itself deserves more films willing to try it. But the script wanted to go somewhere deeper and, in doing so, lost the characters — and a fair amount of the audience — along the way.

Not a must-see. Worth it for the first act and the concept alone — just don’t expect the ending to explain itself.

Where to Watch Bodycam

Similar Movies to Bodycam

If the body-cam angle or the police-procedural-meets-supernatural mix worked for you, these share some of the same ground:

End of Watch (2012) — The clearest touchstone for Bodycam’s format: two LAPD partners filmed largely through their own cameras. No supernatural element here, but the intimate, procedural handheld style is exactly what Bodycam borrows from.

[Rec] (2007) — Emergency responders trapped with something they don’t understand, filmed in real time. Similar escalation from grounded reality into full supernatural horror.

Hell House LLC (2015) — Another film where the “official” explanation of a tragedy turns out to be far stranger than the cover story. Different setting, similar spirit of piecing together what really happened from recovered footage.

Late Night with the Devil (2023) — If the idea of a deal or debt with something demonic — paid in ways the person never agreed to — is what stuck with you most, this is the film to watch next. Different format entirely, same underlying mechanism: you don’t get to choose what the price actually is.

Want more? Read our full article on movies similar to Bodycam.