Spoiler-Free Review: BODYCAM (Nightmares Film Festival)

October 30, 2025

Written by Joseph Perry

Joseph Perry is the Film Festival Editor for Horror Fuel; all film festival related queries and announcements should be sent to him at josephperry@gmail.com. He is a contributing writer for the "Phantom of the Movies VideoScope" and “Drive-In Asylum” print magazines and the websites Gruesome Magazine, Diabolique Magazine, The Scariest Things, B&S About Movies, and When It Was Cool. He is a co-host of the "Uphill Both Ways" pop culture nostalgia podcast and also writes for its website. Joseph occasionally proudly co-writes articles with his son Cohen Perry, who is a film critic in his own right. A former northern Californian and Oregonian, Joseph has been teaching, writing, and living in South Korea since 2008.
Official synopsis

Two police officers investigate a domestic dispute and there is an accidental shooting. Not wanting to be crucified by the public, the officers attempt to cover it up — only to uncover that the cameras aren’t the only things watching them.

Review

In Bodycam (Canada, 2025), police officers Bryce (Sean Rogerson) and Jackson (Jaime M. Callica) respond to a domestic dispute call in what they consider a “tweaker” neighborhood, one that Jackson spent part of his life in. The call is anything but routine, though, and their evening soon escalates from a life-changing event into a fight for their lives. 

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot in director/editor Brandon Christensen’s occult shocker, which he cowrote with his brother Ryan Christensen, so suffice it to say that the recurring line “You took something from us, we take something from you” resonates with increasing dread the more it is uttered, and that the “tweakers” speaking it are a more organized and dangerous group than the officers expected in the area. 

Cinematographer Clayton Moore and Brandon’s editing make the most of their found-footage approach, largely told through bodycams and dashcams. Certain scenes have the feel of first-person–persepective horror and shooting games, and are effectively eerie. 

Those who tend to avoid found-footage movies would be well-advised to make an exception for Bodycam, which focuses marvelously on the drama and relationship between two protagonists caught up in a nightmare that seemingly could have been avoided. 

Bodycam is one of two top-notch fear-fare films on which the Christensens collaborated this year, the other being the strongly recommended slasher-riffing Night of the Reaper.

Bodycam screened as part of Nightmares Film Festival, which took place Oct. 16–19, 2025, at the Gateway Film Center in Columbus, Ohio. For more information, visit https://nightmaresfest.com/.

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