Last year’s Good Boy answered the question, “What if the dog was the main character in a horror movie?” A far better film than it had any right to be, Good Boy used its canine protagonist as the point-of-view character for a complex haunted house of mud monsters, malevolent spirits, and things that go bump in the night, all as a clever metaphor for the helplessness we feel in the face of terminal illness. It was only natural that the same horror movie treatment would eventually be applied to cats.
Cat Cam is, if you’ll pardon the pun, a far different animal than Good Boy, and not because of its feline hero. No, cat lovers will be disappointed, since Gus the cat, the titular star of Cat Cam, is hardly in the movie — he appears off and on for the first hour before disappearing mysteriously. Like a Black person who realizes they’re in a horror movie, it’s implied that Gus had the good sense to wander off the second he found out the house is haunted. Or the ghosts got him. It’s left ambiguous.
Paranormal Activity With Cats
In concept and execution, Cat Cam is more akin to a horror-comedy take on Paranormal Activity, its abundance of fixed cameras witnessing a ridiculous supernatural drama happen to a well-meaning but deeply stupid man (the excellent Cronin Cullen) who’s cat-sitting for his sister. Purr-fect elevator pitch aside, the concept, the lead performance, and the cat are the only things Cat Cam has going for it. The film is unending, unscary, and uninterested in doing anything truly novel with its setup. It’s a disappointing waste of Gus the cat’s considerable talents.
After the lesbian couple Sam (Bry Gallagher) and Riley (Jiavani) go to France on vacation, the daft brother Jay (Cullen) is left to housesit. From paintings that fall off the wall to a faucet that won’t stop leaking, Sam and Riley’s suspiciously affordable home is rife with telltale signs of potential ghost activity. He’s got a whole bag of chips on his shoulder: Determined to prove that he’s more than just a stoner layabout without a job, and that he’s responsible enough to be an uncle when his sister has a kid, Jay takes it upon himself to not only investigate but fix their ghost infestation.
Easier said than done, I’m afraid. The best moments of Cat Cam are when each side of the premise is allowed to flourish: The canny placement of the seven or eight cat cams around the house makes for a good stage for a ghost to play, and it’s good fun watching Jay try to rise above his inadequacies to become the hero his sister never asked for.
All of this serves as a playground for actor Cronin Cullen, an actor who’s had small roles in TV shows, short films, and features for the last 12 years. (That includes small appearances in Westworld, This Is Us, and Netflix’s The Half of It.) Cullen’s silly but earnest wannabe uncle is the real selling point of Cat Cam, and despite being saddled with the unenviable job of playing ghost detective against a chunky cat and a handful of spooky noises, Cullen manages to make Cat Cam a watchable, if not particularly compelling, experience. Long after the cat camera conceit has worn out its welcome and it’s become obvious that filmmaker Sara Werner has no more tricks up her sleeve, I kept watching for Cullen, waiting to see how Jay will next try to outfox a supernatural entity with macho posturing, burning sage, and calling a plumber.
Conclusion
The overwhelming impression I’m left with from Cat Cam is the stench of a great opportunity squandered. Here is a novel premise with a clever hook that I’ve genuinely never seen done before, yet screenwriter Hilary Helding, clearly writing for a microbudget, couldn’t devise any ways to complicate, challenge, or build upon that conceit.
The world of cinema is rich when it comes to creative high-concept microbudget films — Oren Peli’s iconic Paranormal Activity was shot in seven days around his house for just $15,000. Shane Carruth made his time-travel mind-bender Primer for half that much. Recently, we’ve seen time loop films from America (Brightwood) and Japan (Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes) that treat their low, low budgets not as creative constraints but as an exciting challenge to weave heady, sophisticated plots. Cat Cam needed that kind of vision because without it, it’s just a movie about a man, a ghost, and a cat. And the ghost is invisible, and the cat’s hardly in it.
Cat Cam is now available to rent online.
Does content like this matter to you?
Become a Member and support film journalism. Unlock access to all of Film Inquiry`s great articles. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about cinema – get access to our private members Network, give back to independent filmmakers, and more.
Join now!
