‘Hellcat’ Offers Monstrous Thrills With an Uneven Story [Review]

Brock Bodell’s stylish, subversive feature debut Hellcat reinvents monstrous, cryptid mythos in a way I’ve never seen done before. I won’t dare spoil what that is (though the trailer likely does as much already), but suffice to say, Hellcat is a ride best taken blind. It’s the ideal Shudder release, a low-budget, high-concept take on familiar material whose locked-room antics are best viewed alone on a dark and stormy night.

Dakota Gorman stars as Lena, a young woman (of indeterminate age in one of Hellcat’s more amusing beats) who awakens in the back of a speeding trailer. She’s not sure how she’s gotten there, who’s taken her there, or what—most importantly—she’s even doing there. Todd Terry’s Clive, at first largely off-screen, greets her via intercom. His story is as follows: Lena’s been infected while camping alone, and he’s taking her to the nearest hospital for treatment.

In classic, paranoid thriller fashion, savvy audiences will easily clock that Clive isn’t being entirely truthful, and that there’s more at play than the is-she-isn’t-she nature of Lena’s ambiguous infection. Bodell, who also scripted, culls plenty from contemporary context, too, including offhand comments about the “China virus” and the broader fear of unknown infections and diseases, though he’s frustratingly vague in springboarding that dialogue into anything more meaningful than external noise.

Hellcat, as furious and charged up as its name, isn’t simply bio-horror, however. Its locked-room aspirations are far more suggestive, and much weirder, than the opening stretch lets on. Augmenting the claustrophobic terror is DP Andrew Duensing’s gorgeous, wildly inventive method of framing and externalizing Lena’s internal grief. The outside world regularly merges with the cloistered chambers of the trailer, allowing Bodell to expand the cast and add dynamism to a static setting without breaking the immersion or jeopardizing the seriousness of Lena’s predicament.

Much like last year’s Locked, or even vintage fare like Buried, Pontypool, or , mileage—much like the behemoth trailer itself—largely hinges on the interplay between the two leads. Gorman and Terry do great work, though only Terry is given enough singular definition to resonate, with Lena, at best, encapsulating familiar grief and isolation. This is especially true when Terry reveals his true intentions and the threat accelerates—Terry remains a fascinating, broken, and dangerous man, while Lena is unfortunately tasked with overcoming the death of her mother through her outward circumstances.