‘Hellcat’ Review – A Deceptively Simple Chamber Piece that Surprises with its Horror [Fantasia 2025]
A woman wakes up in a moving camper trailer with a strange wound on her arm, unaware how she got there in Hellcat, the feature directorial debut by writer/director Brock Bodell (Ultrasound). That setup gives way to a fast-moving chamber piece that hinges on the element of surprise, specifically designed for audiences to go in […]
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A woman wakes up in a moving camper trailer with a strange wound on her arm, unaware how she got there in Hellcat, the feature directorial debut by writer/director Brock Bodell (Ultrasound). That setup gives way to a fast-moving chamber piece that hinges on the element of surprise, specifically designed for audiences to go in knowing as little as possible.
Bodell plays it close to the vest, toying with subgenres and expectations to send viewers on an unexpected horror journey.
The woman plunged into a survival nightmare is Lena (Dakota Gorman), a young woman who’d been camping alone, only to awaken in the camper. It’s an alarming situation that naturally puts Lena on the defensive, especially when the camper’s driver, Clive (Todd Terry), explains over the intercom that he can’t let her go with that gnarly injury on her arm. Clive seems well-intentioned, and his warnings about that wound becoming infected ring true, but the stressful standoff between captive and driver escalates, and reality begins to blur in increasingly dangerous ways.
