We aren’t privy to whatever horrors are taking place right at the start of Hellcat (2025) – though we hear enough, and then we follow a beaten-up but homely trailer – with a woman locked inside – which now seems to be travelling with some urgency along a long, deserted road. The young woman (Dakota Gorman) has an injury; however, something else we quickly glean is that her memory is faulty, so she can’t account for her current condition. She starts to explore her current environs with a view to escape, but before she’s able to get out, she suddenly hears a voice.
Through the trailer’s speakers, a man explains to her that he’s the one who’s locked her back there, but only because he wants to help her. He tells her, without any further details, that she has been ‘infected’, leaving her with only an hour or less to get medical help, or else nothing can be done to save her. The woman attempts to verify what he’s saying – there is, in fact, some evidence for his claims – but the power imbalance here is such that she remains paranoid, mistrustful. This is not helped by the fact that the man – who gives his name as Clive (Todd Terry) – can hear and see her, and everything he goes on to reveal complicates things: can his version of events be trusted? At this point, Lena is dealing only with a voice; like Lena, we too must decide whether, and what to accept. It’s vital for her that she is able to piece together what brought her to this point.
Hellcat doles out its truths, half-truths and lies very carefully, sustaining its initial gut-punch of tension whilst steadily creating more. It adds in more horror elements as it unfolds, though for a while it feels as if the film could go in a number of different horror directions – and it’s in this phase that Hellcat is really at its strongest. At this early point, all you can really feel sure is that things are going to get worse. The perpetual forwards motion of the trailer adds to this somehow – this sense of a literally unstoppable journey – but the film is equally (and quite surprisingly) colourful and rich, with clever, blended flashback sequences which bring old memories into the trailer, doing a great deal with the limited space in which most of the film plays out. Minor surreal touches and knowing nods to other ideas work well, too. What the film opts to include and what it opts to omit also displays careful understanding of how to work within the restrictions of a low-budget film, without sacrificing its strengths.
Dakota Gorman, as Lena, has to sustain the bulk of the film as the only actor on screen, and she does so very effectively. She’s no feckless, screaming victim; she works hard to orientate herself in this hostile new environment, and it’s also made clear that she is reckoning with a raft of traumatic prior experiences, and that these have shaped her. She is defiant and resourceful. Equally, Todd Terry has to foster this fear and defiance whilst being off-camera for the most part; it’s an immense ask for any actor, but he does a great job. There’s an element of a battle of wills between a young woman and an older, unknown man here, and if the film particularly resembles another then it’s 10 Cloverfield Lane: there’s a similar power struggle, a similar, possibly pseudo-paternal relationship and talk of some dark force outside, threatening harm. However, in Hellcat, the locus of the threat is the girl’s own body, which changes the dynamics significantly. There’s still a mystery here to unpick, but no sense that Lena can escape whatever is going on in any simple sense.
Whilst the first half of the film is the most assured, and some questions occur around the hour mark as to how things are going to resolve themselves, then the let-up is only brief and any missteps here are rare. Hellcat both fosters a sense of continuity with its horror roots, and also creates a fresh-feeling story. With its shifting sympathies and its nightmarish repurposing of liminal Americana, this is a carefully-plotted, economical and gripping tale.
Hellcat (2025) received its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival on Friday, July 25th.