Great concept for a film and I always love to see a screenlife film, but Bloat unfortunately suffers from extremely poor execution. Starts off admittedly strong and takes an incredibly steep turn downhill almost immediately. Littered with strange editing choices and inconsistencies, generative AI slop and sloppy production quality in general. Acting performances range from shockingly poor to shockingly okay. Ben McKenzie does pretty alright, but the boy who plays his son Steve in the film shockingly outperforms literally everybody else in this film. Interactions between characters often feel forced and unnatural, likely because they weren't actually acting with each other, and the script baffled me at some points. Not quite as bad as War of the Worlds (2025), but boy it gets close.
Great concept for a film and I always love to see a screenlife film, but Bloat unfortunately suffers from extremely poor execution. Starts off admittedly strong and takes an incredibly steep turn downhill almost immediately. Littered with strange editing choices and inconsistencies, generative AI slop and sloppy production quality in general. Acting performances range from shockingly poor to shockingly okay. Ben McKenzie does pretty alright, but the boy who plays his son Steve in the film shockingly outperforms literally everybody else in this film. Interactions between characters often feel forced and unnatural, likely because they weren't actually acting with each other, and the script baffled me at some points. Not quite as bad as War of the Worlds (2025), but boy it gets close.