“Bloat” (2025), the screenlife thriller gets a new iteration in this Paul Absento thriller, which follows a US Army general, Jack Reynolds, who, through a virtual connection to his family vacationing in Tokyo, slowly realizes that his younger son, Kyle, might be the victim of possession.
Bloat (2025) Plot Summary and Movie Synopsis
As is emblematic of screenlife thrillers, every perspective we see is via a screen, and the first scene we see is of the Reynolds—Jack (Ben McKenzie) and Hannah (Bojanna Novakovic)—celebrating the birth of their third child via a recording on Jack’s phone, only to be blindsided by the baby’s untimely death. Presumably a couple of months later, via iMessages, we see Hannah coaxing Jack to take a leave and go on a family vacation as a way to heal from family trauma.
Jack, out of the numerous popular travel destinations, selects Tokyo. While excitedly planning for the trip, he finds himself unable to accompany his family for the vacation, as he would be called back to his post as the war escalates in the Middle East. Thus Jack would have to vicariously enjoy the Tokyo trip through FaceTime calls. In one of those eventful FaceTime calls with wife Hannah, his younger son Kyle (Sawyer Jones) almost drowns in Kawaguchi Lake, Japan. Jack comes to know about the accident and the miraculous close shave through an Instagram post dug up by his friend and fellow marine. But in that Instagram video he notices greenish vomit being spewed by Kyle when he finally regains consciousness.
Slowly both Jack and Hannah realize that something is wrong with Kyle. For one thing, he is only eating cucumbers and natto, and even unwashed. But what stopped him cold was when he would see his two sons fighting over it because Kyle thought Steve had been taking his frog, and he witnessed Kyle’s eyes glowing green while throwing a tantrum and having bitten his older brother in a very weird fashion.
The green eyeballs and violent behavior Jack attributes to PTSD as a result of the trauma, primarily due to internet browsing as well as his conversation with Kyle’s therapist, Dr. Shinji Ishikawa, with whom Jack categorically disagrees in giving Kyle time and thus having had to stay back in Japan. But what grabs Jack’s attention is again another computer glitch, where he clearly sees a monster through those computer glitches. This suspicion of something supernatural mixed with the technological leads him to sign up for a forum dealing with such supernatural sightings—darkthreads.co.
A few weird incidents further exacerbate and worry Jack—one is during Kyle’s birthday when he responds to Jack’s message in Japanese, and the next is when Steve and Kyle would be playing with the drone camera that Jack had gifted for Kyle. While playing with the drone, it would fall in the sea, and Kyle would jump in the water without hesitation. While rescuing, Jack would unmistakably see a monstrous face within the glitchy photo of Kyle.
It would affect and haunt both Jack and Hannah in their dreams, where they would be driven further by the loss of one of their children, and Kyle’s undiagnosed issue further worries them. It leads to a fight between them, Jack going on a drunken binge (notified by his credit card expenditure) and later in his drunken stupor going through threads in the dark threads site and learning about how ghostly images and stuttering videos housed supernatural presences who could seamlessly move within the digital world, and thus those glitches reveal the actual presence of said supernatural elements, which only strengthens Jack’s suspicions about Kyle’s traumatic response essentially being a possession, which would also explain his cucumber and bug obsessions, leading to Jack’s response to his father that Kyle has changed.
The next morning Hannah would be in an uproar due to Jack’s disappearance. While Jack would be finally located by the police at the forest and chastised by both his parents, we learn that Jack had actually followed his brother that night, having discovered his brother’s strange actions via a baby monitor. He soon sees his brother hanging out at night with other kids, but is unsure whether they were kids or something unidentifiable.
As every member of the family begins to break down or worry, Jack tries to corral things together. He hires his buddy Ryan to go back to Tokyo and investigate demonic possession, He also discovers Hannah buying pills and indulging in them. Ryan’s investigation leads him to a Buddhist priest, from whom he learns about a water spirit named Kappa. However, while the Kappa is known for consuming and killing humans, it had never been known to possess kids in their entirety, except for one case in 2011 where the father had been sent to prison because while vacationing in Tokyo, he had burnt his son believing him to be possessed by the same yokai.
Realizing that the only one who can possibly help him is Derrick Gray, the marine serving a life sentence, he manages to locate further details about the tragic incident in dark threads and manages to contact him. Gray calls him from the prison, where he advises Jack that burning a possessed kid is the only way to save him from the Kappa. Gray had lost his son because it had been too late and his soul had been consumed by the Kappa, and the fire had killed both the Kappa and the young boy.
Jack had managed to, aided by his elder son, install cameras that could allow him to watch over the Airbnb that they had been staying in. He is already stuck back in Syria, berated by his superior for ignoring his duties, and realizing that a storm coming to Okinawa restricts flights from reaching there, and thus the plan to join Ryan in hunting down the Kappa is also out the door. It is frustrating because further investigation through the video cameras leads Jack to realize that the Kappas had definitely been trying to infest the rest of the family. His suspicions would be strengthened by talking with his wife, who had been having a welcome alone time in the bath, drinking a glass of wine, but soon sees his wife start to lose her mind while killing a bug on the wall of the bathroom.
The final nail in the coffin and what leads him to make the decision to fly down to Tokyo irrespective of the weather or the loss of his job is the death of his friend Ryan. Taking the advice of the priest and trying to shoot the monster doesn’t work because the supernatural atmospherics around the monster lead to Ryan essentially losing his mind, similar to Hannah, and being murdered by the Kappa.
Bloat (2025) Movie Ending Explained:
Does Jack manage to save his family from the Kappa?
We then see Jack finally taking the flight to Tokyo and driving to the Airbnb, but his journey resembles the foreboding heavy weather, as Hannah wasn’t responsive to their calls. As Jack finally reaches the Airbnb, he finally manages to open the door and finds the house in shambles and the bathtub completely filled with water and vines, and Hannah being essentially killed by an animal with large claws.
Realizing that drastic measures need to be made, Jack, even though he is terrified, and upon learning that while Steve had gone to his neighbor’s party, Kyle had stayed back, begins to burn the house down. The camera captures the Kappa in its full glory, and as Jack manages to break out of the house, he calls out for his son.
The movie ends with the events of the next morning being addressed in news cycles, where, in a manner similar to Derrick Gray, he is tried in court. However, Jack is acquitted by both his sons, who emphasize his character and his devotion to his kids as a father. While the film teases a happy ending, we see a video glitch as the camera focuses on an apparently cured Kyle, and the Kappa haven’t completely let go of his possession.
