Ben McKenzie, Bojana Novakovic, Hiroshi Watanabe, horror, Kane Kosugi, Malcolm Fuller, Motoki Kobayashi, movies, Pablo Absento, reviews, Royce Johnson, Sawyer Jones
April 14, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Pablo Absento
Culture Representation: Taking place in Japan and in the United States, the horror film “Bloat” features a white and Asian group of people representing the working-class and the middle-class.
Culture Clash: A U.S. Army official, whose wife and two sons are temporarily living in Japan while he is on duty in the U.S., finds out that his younger son has been infected during a drowning accident and appears to be possessed by a demon.
Culture Audience: “Bloat” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and who don’t mind watching boring and idiotic horror movies.
Much of the insipid horror movie “Bloat” consists of people looking at computer screens and being confused. That’s because this atrocious movie (about a father trying to do online help for his demon-possessed 10-year-old son) is a terrible and boring mess. The editing is sloppy, the plot is often nonsensical, and “Bloat” isn’t even that scary. And the ending of the film is absolutely horrible because it leaves a big question unanswered.
Written and directed by Pablo Absento, “Bloat” is his feature-film debut. Horror movies that rely heavily on scenes were people are just looking at screens that are on computers and phones have to maintain a certain level of suspense and tension. “Bloat” completely fails in this regard. The movie is often unfocused and has a contradictory timeline with too many plot holes.
“Bloat” begins by showing home video footage of U.S. Army official Jack Reynolds (played by Ben McKenzie, one of the producers of “Bloat”) and his wife Hannah Reynolds (played by Bojana Novakovic) in a hospital delivery room as she gives birth to their third child: a daughter named Ava. (Jack’s military title is never revealed in the movie, but conversations imply he’s a mid-level official.) Ava (who looks red and bloated when she is born) is suddenly taken away by alarmed medical professionals in the room. Hannah shouts with fear when she asks why they are taking Ava away.
The movie then abruptly cuts to text messages that are being sent between Jack and Hannah. The messages reveal that Ava died at the hospital. The cause of death is never revealed in the movie. It’s also never made clear how long ago Ava died, but Jack and Hannah are understandably grieving.
Hannah texts this message: “Jack, we lost a child, she’s gone. Let’s make sure we don’t lose what we still have.” It’s soon revealed that Jack and Hannah have two other children: Their son Steve (played by Malcolm Fuller) is about 12 or 13 years old. Their son Kyle (played by Sawyer Jones) is 10 years old.
To help with their grief, Jack and Hannah decide to take a family vacation trip with their sons to Japan. They book an Airbnb house in Tokyo to stay at during the family’s visit to Japan. However, right before they are supposed to go on the trip, U.S. military bases and facilities are attacked in Iraq and Syria. Jack is ordered to stay in the United States. He tells Hannah that she, Steve and Kyle should still go ahead with the trip to Japan.
“Bloat” is so poorly written, it has contradicting information on what year that Kyle became possessed. In one part of the movie, it says he became possessed in 2018. In another part of the movie, which is supposed to take place abut four to eight weeks later, the year is shown as 2020.
After Hannah, Steve and Kyle arrive in Japan, Hannah sends videos and does live video calls with Jack so he can see their activities. On a family outing at a lake, a tragedy occurs: Four boys who were on a school trip drowned in the lake. Kyle had also been swimming in the lake at the time and almost drowned, but he survived because a Japanese friend of the Reynolds family—a nurse name Iriko—happened to be there too and saved Kyle from drowning.
Iriko is never seen or heard from in the movie. It’s a weird loose end that is never explained, considering all the medical problems that Kyle experiences in Japan when he is far away from home. Why mention a “family friend” nurse character who saved Kyle from drowning, and then never bring the character into the movie? What kind of “nurse friend” never checks in with the family of the child she saved from drowning? It’s an example of the sloppy screenwriting in “Bloat.”
An alarmed Jack sees news video footage of Kyle being pulled from the lake. Kyle has strange green bile coming out of his mouth. Visitors’ cell phones aren’t allowed in the hospital where Kyle is getting medical treatment, so it takes a while before Jack can find out what’s going on from Steve and Hannah. Eventually, Kyle is discharged from the hospital and stays with his Hannah and Steve at the rented Airbnb house in Tokyo.
Through video calls and text messages from Steve, Jack finds out that Kyle just hasn’t been the same since Kyle’s near-death experience. Kyle has become moody, withdrawn and occasionally violent. Kyle barely talks and has become almost mute. He also has a vacant look in his eyes and doesn’t seem to connect with people who try to talk to him.
There’s a disturbing incident that Jack sees in a video call. Steve and Kyle are fighting over a small frog that Kyle wants to keep with him. Kyle has a temper-tantrum meltdown where he repeatedly shouts, “Get away from my frog!”
Kyle then bites Steve hard enough on Steve’s right arm to break the skin and leave a noticeable injury. When Jack plays back the video and does a freeze-frame right after Kyle has bitten Steve, Jack sees that Kyle’s eyes appear to be demonic and glowing. Jack wants to think it’s a technical glitch, but over time, he begins to wonder if Kyle is possessed.
Kyle is put into therapy with Dr. Shinji Ishikawa (played by Motoki Kobayashi), an English-speaking therapist based in Tokyo. Dr. Ishikawa, who treats children and adults, has diagnosed Kyle with having post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The doctor advises Jack that it will takes some time before progress can be made in Kyle’s recovery.
However, Jack becomes impatient. And he starts to believe Steve’s theory that Kyle could be possessed by an unknown entity. Steve has been using a “baby cam” to secretly record Kyle in his bedroom and finds out that Kyle has been hoarding and eating dead insects and rotten cucumbers that Kyle hides underneath his bed.
Steve shows Jack this disturbing footage, which is enough for Jack to be even more convinced that something else is going on with Kyle that is not PTSD. Jack goes on the Dark Web and finds a support group called Parents of Possessed Kids. The only way to join the group is if access is approved, so there’s period of time where Jack has to wait for access.
Hannah is in complete denial about how serious Kyle’s problems are. Steve also tells Jack that Hannah is starting to drink more alcohol and might be taking pills again. Conversations between Steve and Jack imply that Hannah was in recovery for an addiction problem but she has now relapsed. As time goes on, Jack grows concerned that Hannah seems to be drunk every time he calls.
Hannah, Steve and Kyle are supposed to be on vacation, but the movie acts like they’re expected to stay in Japan during Kyle’s recovery, which is for an extended and undetermined period of time. “Bloat” doesn’t have any realistic discussions about visa issues for an extended stay or why Kyle isn’t getting treatment in the United States. After all, if Hannah, Steve and Kyle went back to the United States to live with Jack, there would be no need for the movie’s botched gimmick of Jack only able to see his family through video chats.
“Bloat” goes off on several tangents that are clumsily handled. Jack has an Army buddy named Ryan Aoki (played by Kane Kosugi), who accepts Jack’s request to go to Tokyo to check on Hannah, Steve and Kyle. A screenshot in the movie shows that Ryan goes to visit the Reynolds family in Tokyo in September 2020. And yet, earlier in the movie, it shows that Kyle’s near-drowning accident happened on February 18, 2018. But based on the way the timeline is explained in the movie, the Reynolds family has been in Japan for only four to eight weeks (at the most) by the time Ryan goes to visit.
Jack’s family problems cause distractions for him at work, where he shows up late for meetings, so his commanding officer gets increasingly frustrated and angry with Jack. The movie’s explanation for Jack not going to Japan, even though he has a family emergency, is he has been strictly ordered to stay at his military base in the United States and could be charged with going AWOL (absent without leave) if he leaves without permission. Because of the contradictory timeline, the movie does a horrible job of explaining how long Jack has been away from his family.
Jack and Ryan do some research that involves an unnamed Japanese monk (played by Hiroshi Watanabe) and a past news report about an American father named Derrick (played by Royce Johnson) whose son Gary went through a situation that was similar to what Kyle is going through. There’s some nonsense in the movie about an ancient water-dwelling demon named Kappa. Steve wants to play detective too, so he does things like secretly follow and film Kyle into a wooded area where Kyle sneaks off to at night.
The acting performances in “Bloat” are nothing special and are often very tedious. Most of the movie’s characters have flat and underdeveloped personalities. The not-surprising-at-all reveal of a demon monster is underwhelming. It leads to an inevitable part of the movie where an exorcism of Kyle is planned.
The last 10 minutes of the film bring an abrupt and slipshod turn to the story. “Bloat” could have been a much better movie if it had a clever screenplay, skilled direction, and engaging performances. Ironically, this movie about a fateful drowning accident purposely drowns itself in mishandled and dull filmmaking.
Lionsgate released “Bloat” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and on VOD on March 7, 2025.