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I’d only seen a handful of screenlife movies (films presented through computer screens as a form of the found footage subgenre, i.e. “Unfriended,” its sequel and the popular COVID séance short “Host”) prior to seeing “Bloat” (now available in select theaters and on VOD). I liked this flourish and these films well enough initially, but the technique sticks out like a sore thumb here. “Bloat” feels bloated despite only being 87 minutes.
Ben McKenzie of “The O.C.” and “Gotham” stars as Jack, a military man who’s separated from his family while on duty in Turkey. His wife Hannah (Bojana Novakovic) and their sons Steve (Malcolm Fuller) and Kyle (Sawyer Jones) are on holiday in Japan. Jack and Hannah are still understandably reeling from the loss of their stillborn daughter. Both are finding solace in bottles – he with booze; she with pills.
Things go from bad to worse when Kyle drowns in a Japanese lake. Thankfully, he’s revived, but awakens changed. The kid now pretty much only eats cucumbers and begins collecting scads of insects. Kyle barely talks and when he does it’s in the form of temper tantrums.
Jack begins to believe that Kyle’s been possessed by a creature known as a kappa, which is water-based and part-reptile, part-monkey and part-human. He asks his Army buddy Ryan (Kane Kosugi, son and frequent co-star of 1980s ninja movie mainstay Sho Kosugi) to look in on his family and hunt and kill the entity if possible.
“Bloat” is the feature debut of writer/director Pablo Absento. I do believe her film would’ve been better had more traditional techniques been employed. Screenlife adds little to nothing to the proceedings and often results in dialogue exchanges that are very much wash, rinse, repeat. It begins to bore and feels much longer than its 87 minutes.
In spite of all of this, “Bloat” isn’t all bad. I thought McKenzie’s performance was pretty good and it’s always fun to see Kosugi pop up in stuff. The picture did get better and scarier later in its run, but it’s too little too late.
“Bloat” ultimately drowns in clichés with scares that are scarce but not absent … or Absento as the case may be.