There’s a joke somewhere about the title of this film and how it starts strong but falls apart by the end. It’s an easy one too… this screen life flick is awfully… bloated. Har-de-har-har.

Anyhow, Bloat is about a military man who has to stay on duty as his wife and two sons vacation in Japan. When his youngest almost drowns, the kid turns… weird. The dad has to figure out what’s going on from half-way across the world using only his various screens and apps.

I thought the first half of this film was pretty cool. It plays well with its themes of distance and the inability to be a proper husband and father when stationed on the other side of the world. The mystery of why his son is acting the way he is is intriguing and trying to figure out if the rest of his family are ok worked well too.

Unfortunately, once they narrow down what supernatural spookum out of Japanese folklore they’re dealing with, the film flags and falls apart. They perform multiple investigations with Japanese monks and people who had previous encounters that both feel like wheel-spinning. The dad also connects with an old friend who is the most annoying character anyone every conjured up. Less him, please.

Plus it has an ending that is bad even by found footage and screen life standards. It’s pure nonsense, often accompanied by LOUD MUSIC!! Which doesn’t make sense for either screen life or found footage. The final moments are about as shrug-worthy as the genre can get.

This flick started with a pretty good rating in my head and then collapsed into something dreadfully boring and frustrating. I genuinely thought its low average rating on LB was due to residual hatred of found footage but, no, it really is just a bad flick.

Score: 68