Bodycam
Monday 13th October 2025, what should have been a routine night patrol for Officers Bryce Anderson and Jerome Jackson, watching for cars breaking the speed limit as they count the hours until the call came in, a domestic disturbance in Jackson’s old neighbourhood, long since gone downhill but his mother still living there, trying to offer some measure of support to the local teens who have few opportunities other than drug and gangs.
Arriving at the address the officers enter and split up, Jackson finding a bloody crib and a distressed woman upstairs, Anderson heading to the basement where a pit awaits, dug into the foundations, rushed by a man who tries to push him in, shooting him in defence though it transpires he was in fact unarmed, the incident caught on bodycam and Anderson certain that he will be held accountable for manslaughter if not murder.
Directed by Brandon Christensen from a script co-written with Ryan Christensen, the filmmaking brothers change direction again following The Puppetman and Night of the Reaper with what is ostensibly a “found footage” film, Bodycam a montage of the dashcam from the vehicle of the two officers and their own points of view, every forced decision, good and bad, every conversation and every horror, captured for consideration and judgement.
With Jaime M Callica as Jerome Jackson, he is the more sanguine but was not the one who was attacked, Sean Rogerson’s Bryce Anderson convinced that he will be accused of acting without justification even though the video confirms he was rushed while backed into a corner and gave multiple warnings, his certainty presumably originating from previous similar incidents and subsequent censure and his attempt to conceal evidence, again on camera, sealing his fate.
A thriller of the surveillance state, where every second can be replayed, every flash thought cross-examined at leisure after the fact, presented almost as a first person shooter Bodycam does not actively condemn the police but is aware of how they are perceived on the streets, Jerome’s mother Ally (Catherine Lough Haggquist) pointing out “you don’t mix well with the people you’re supposed to be helping,” compromised cogs in a system which doesn’t work as it should, like the film itself.
Clocking in at a taught seventy five minutes, the first hour is excellent as the incident occurs and the sense of menace increases, the men isolated and unable to call for help and the derelicts of the neighbourhood gathering as if drawn to them, the officers and the plot with nowhere to go as their routes out are cut off and loop back on themselves to the inevitable thing rising in the basement, Baskin without the budget to support the vision and reliant on the optimistic notion that a police officer might feel guilt or be held accountable.
Bodycam will be streaming on Shudder from Friday 13th March
