‘Bloat’ Review: There’s Something In The Water In New Screen Life Creature Feature
Timur Bekmambetov is a pioneer in the world of screen life horror, producing the 2014 horror hit Unfriended that popularized the subgenre. Since then, he’s been involved with almost every screen life horror film produced, from Searching and Missing, to the brand new supernatural Bloat, directed and written by Pablo Absento. While Bloat is a refreshing take on the subgenre, especially through its attempts to discuss Japanese lore and yokai, a jumbled plot keeps the new screen life film from achieving greatness.
Bloat opens with what seems to be a happy video of Hannah (Bojana Novakovic) giving birth while her husband Jack (Ben McKenzie) films, declaring they’re now parents of three. But, that happiness is quickly obliterated as the baby isn’t breathing and Jack, our viewer proxy, pauses the footage. Here, we see him text his wife and say they need to plan a vacation for themselves and their two young sons Steve (Malcom Fuller) and Kyle (Sawyer Jones). So, they pick a family friendly location (Tokyo is perfect for family vacations, according to this film’s version of Google) and get ready to fly off to the land of the rising sun.
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But, Jack is a high-up officer in the military who pilots drones with the help of AI. So when conflict grows in the Middle East on the eve of their vacation, Jack is forced to stay behind to execute violent military missions while his wife and sons visit shrines, try new foods, and explore mountain villages. So he just watches through FaceTime calls, text exchanges, and videos sent from the latest excursion. Then, one day while visiting a remote mountain town, their youngest son Kyle has an accident and almost drowns.
While he’s resuscitated, something isn’t right. He starts acting irrationally and has a newfound love of cucumbers and bugs. While Hannah thinks it’s just PTSD after a traumatic event, Jack begins to think something else is wrong, something beyond a trauma response. Through some online research and an old buddy willing to help get answers, Jack believes that Kyle might be possessed by a kappa, a Japanese water spirit. But getting rid of the entity is no easy task, especially through a computer screen.
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The kappa is a Japanese spirit, or yokai, that lives in and near the water. They resemble humanoid frogs and are know for drowning their victims. While they’ve been part of Japanese folklore for centuries, there aren’t many movies about them, Japanese or otherwise. And Absento finds an interesting way into the legend with Bloat. Unfortunately the world-building and story about the kappa barely holds water as Kyle’s apparent possession by the creature worsens.
With a short runtime of 87 minutes, this is a rare case where a film would have benefited from being longer and spending more time with our characters. Everything in Bloat feels rushed, like there were scenes left on the cutting room floor that would’ve provided much needed context. For example, why make the strange choice for Jack to be a drone operator and doing top secret missions while also Google searching and joining possessed kid forums? Sure, it makes sense if there was a political statement to be made. But Bloat just presents it as fact without any kind of interrogation or discussion of Jack’s divisive career.
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More broadly, any of the story’s explanations for what’s unfolding are too convenient, like an English-speaking Buddhist monk or an American prisoner who can quickly explain precisely what’s happening in the film’s final 30 minutes. In the same breath, those explanations aren’t used to bring the film to a satisfying conclusion.
While the story needs help, there’s no denying the creativity behind the film’s technical execution. Absento and team make particularly skillful use of glitches to reveal some of film’s scariest moments. While previously popular screen life films like Searching, Missing, and even Unfriended: Dark Web often take the “humans are the real monsters” route, Bloat is squarely supernatural and isn’t afraid to commit to that. Plus the team finds creative ways to represent Jack’s renewed drinking problem through Uber and bank notifications. Yes, the story also tries to address substance abuse in both parents.
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McKenzie and Novakovic also deserve credit for delivering convincingly painful portraits of two parents clinging onto their sanity with every ounce of strength they have left. With each strange revelation, McKenzie still plays Jack with a chaotic desperation, a man who helplessly watches as his family falls apart half a world away.
With Bloat, Absento takes a big swing for the screenlife subgenre, which I greatly appreciate, but unfortunately this swing isn’t a home run. While Absento makes excellent use of the screen life format and thankfully mostly keeps the story away from being the typical tale of white people in a foreign land, the story doesn’t match the technical achievements. Hopefully, Bloat will open up all new possibilities for horror filmmakers, showing them the kinds of stories possible within the confines of a computer screen.
Bloat is out now on digital and VOD.
Summary
While Bloat is a refreshing take on the subgenre, especially through its attempts to discuss Japanese lore and yokai, a jumbled plot keeps the new screen life film from achieving greatness.
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