Brandon Christensen has quietly become one of the most dependable voices in North American indie horror, and with Bodycam he leans into something far more chaotic and experimental than anything in Still/Born or Z. What begins as a routine domestic disturbance call for Officers Jackson (Jaime M. Callica) and Bryce (Sean Rogerson) spirals into a relentless gauntlet of claustrophobic hallways, skittering rats, screaming victims and blood soaked basements. It is a film that starts grounded and familiar, almost comfortingly so, thanks to the natural banter between the two cops as they cruise through Jackson’s old neighborhood. That early authenticity buys Christensen a lot of trust before he starts tearing the floorboards out.
Once the officers enter the seemingly abandoned house, Bodycam barely lets up. The space feels filthy, unsafe, and hostile. Every corner hides something unsettling. Every cut hides a transition so cleverly that you almost forget this was made on a tiny budget. The found footage presentation, driven mostly through police bodycam rigs, gives the movie the feel of an extended and particularly unhinged segment from the VHS franchise. Christensen takes the limitations of POV and turns them into strengths. You never get the coverage or clarity you'd expect, and that unpredictability works in the film’s favor. You always feel like you are a half step behind the terror.
What follows is a blend of haunted house attraction, police thriller, and first-person horror video game. You can feel DNA from End of Watch, Training Day, Cops, and even the livestream chaos of Dashcam, but the film never settles into one mode for long. It keeps curbing your expectations. You think you know the shape of the scene until something yanks it sideways. Sometimes that comes from a creature design that feels ripped from creepypasta folklore. Sometimes it is a burst of violence that feels shockingly real due to the jittery POV framing.
This is also where the film starts to go completely off the rails, something Christensen leans into without apology. The last stretch becomes a full-blown roller coaster with visuals that seem impossible for a film this small. Some of the effects are frankly insane considering the budget, and they elevate Bodycam from a novelty exercise into something legitimately impressive.
To Christensen’s credit, the movie is not just noise and chaos. There are genuinely creepy moments peppered throughout and a few character beats that land harder than you would expect from an almost entirely POV shock machine. Jackson and Bryce are compelling, even when their cameras turn them into avatars in a nightmare FPS.
Bodycam is not reinventing the genre, but it is absolutely playing with the genre in clever and creative ways. It is fast, dirty, relentlessly entertaining, and never wastes a second of its compact runtime. This thing moves. In an era where horror can often feel bloated or self-important, Christensen delivers a film that is lean, mean, and completely unpretentious. It feels like the horror equivalent of a rooftop beer chugged directly from the can. No frills. No filler. Just vibes, panic, and an escalating sense that nothing good is waiting around the next corner.
One of the funnest and most creative horror rides we have gotten in years. Perfect runtime. Perfect atmosphere. A messy, freaky blast.
Jessie Hobson