Brock Bodell’s directorial debut, Hellcat, begins with a wounded and frantic woman, Lena (Dakota Gorman), waking up in a moving camper trailer. A drawling voice emits through a taxidermal wolf head stationed on the trailer wall, advising her to stay calm. Lena’s panic increases when she hears moans emanating from a locked room at the back of the trailer. She learns that the wolf head’s voice belongs to Clive (Todd Terry), the truck driver towing her trailer, and the two characters begin communicating in a push-pull, captor-captive dynamic of negotiations.
Bodell directs Hellcat with a consciously unsteady hand, the camera constantly pushing and wobbling. Sounds of wind and rattling metal accompany the images. Visual motifs tease out the plot’s central mysteries — what’s happening to Lena? What are Clive’s motives? The proceedings are appropriately nervous.
Hellcat is entrenched in basic storytelling mechanics, grappling with the tensions between what’s known or unknown, seen or unseen, real or imagined. It draws on the interplay between beat-by-beat plot developments and Lena’s inner world (through imaginary tableaux and internal home video montages). The film is both limited and empowered by its own chamber drama machinery. Its effectiveness depends on the timing of plot revelations and the gradual expanding of narrative and spatial fields of vision.
To some degree, Hellcat’s central conceit helps limit its narrative challenges surrounding character agency, but it increasingly struggles to maintain a hold on narrative logic as its scope widens. Occasionally, plot seems to determine character motivation, rather than vice versa. It also grapples with the necessity for an escalation of visual and tonal intensity. It doesn’t quite deliver on this front, instead coasting on its premise’s basic stakes and the intensity of Gorman’s performance.
And to be sure, Gorman is committed, enthusiastically leaning into the challenge of playing many solo scenes. She’s so invested in the role that one can’t help wondering if Hellcat might’ve been more exciting as an expressly claustrophobic, interior-focused film that drew more exclusively on her devotion and screen presence. Perhaps Hellcat’s aspirations to tension and dread could’ve been more successfully achieved by a heavier reliance on Lena’s internal experience rather than on her external conflicts with Clive.
For all its flaws, Hellcat is lovingly made, steeped in genre references and intriguing paranormal mythology. It contributes to a recent cinematic trend of women-centred body horror (from Julia Ducournau’s Raw [2016] and Titane [2021] to Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance [2024] and beyond). Its playful ambition is sometimes to its detriment — the premise begs for something just a bit more grounded, visceral, and paranoid — but its spirit and its efforts are commendable.
Published as part of Fantasia Fest 2025 — Dispatch 3.
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