Panic Fest 2026 Coverage
Cat Cam review
Paranormal Cativity.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
Cat Cam
Directed by Sara Werner
Written by Hilary Helding
Starring Cronin Cullen, Jiavani and Michele Hart
Cat Cam Review
Full disclosure…I’ve never seen a Paranormal Activity movie. That may seem like a weird way to begins a review of a movie called Cat Cam…but Cat Cam is a lot like I think the Paranormal Activity movies are. Unless I’ve been misled by decades of advertising…I’m fairly confident that the film series involves a lot of waiting around for something to happen. Even if it isn’t…that’s what Cat Cam is. I guess I could have gotten to that without invoking a film series I have no firsthand experience with. But then I couldn’t have made the Paranormal Cativity pun I put in the opening. There was no way I was passing on that.
Context clues in that first paragraph may have led you directly to what’s going on in Cat Cam. A couple heads on vacation leaving their precious cat behind. They ask a relative of questionable responsibility to watch over the cat in their absence. A plethora of cameras allow the couple to check in on their pet…and keep tabs on the cat-sitter. We watch the movie through those cameras…mostly waiting for something to happen.
The story makes a big deal about the cat-sitter’s spotty history of being responsible or trustworthy. In truth, nothing that happens in Cat Cam is his fault. The house is haunted, you see. Something that he actually becomes aware of fairly quickly during his stay. The couple has only recently moved into the home…and he actually uncovers that they aren’t the first tenants to have unexplainable phenomena occur in the residence. There’s a bit of an investigation done here…but, as we are bound by the cameras in the house, we’re just watching phone calls. It’s not the most dynamic thing in the world. Which can also be said about Cat Cam as a whole.
The cat is the first one to recognize something is wrong in the new house. But Cat Cam is less about the cat than you’d expect. It’s mostly about the cat-sitter. His spotty record is as close to a plot as Cat Cam really has. He’s insulted that there are questions about his ability to feed a cat…and he’s resolute in the idea that he’s done nothing wrong when it turns out that he couldn’t. He’s right…but this takes up way more time than you’d expect in the story. He’s the only character on screen for a big chunk of Cat Cam. The actor does a fine job trying to keep things moving…but there’s not a lot going on. Spooky hijinks are largely contained to flickering lights and a faucet that won’t stop leaking.
The mystery of what’s happening is also there if you want it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t run much deeper than “it’s a haunted house”. Uncovering what happened to the last people who lived there does little more than fill time. We can already see that there is something strange going on. The cat certainly knows it…hiding under the bed every time the cat-sitter goes looking for him. He knows it too…but the couple (on the phone, of course) is resistant to believing him. There’s more discussion about scary things than there is an attempt to present scary things.
Cat Cam is one of those movies where you catch on pretty early on that nothing is really going to happen until the climax. You just hope that what happens was worth all that waiting. I don’t think it is in this case. But Cat Cam deserves some points for making something out of nothing. Even if it’s a very little amount of something.
Scare Value
Cat Cam isn’t the most exciting found footage movie you’ll find this year. It struggles to build tension or provide suspense even with a cat at the center of the haunting. Instead of focusing on that…it spends time watching a guy look into what’s happening and struggle to fix a faucet. At least he’s smart enough to recognize the supernatural nature of his situation. If only he’d have been smart enough to just take the cat and leave. Watching a series of empty rooms wouldn’t have been much less exciting anyway.
