Hellcat (2025)
Directed & Written by Brock Bodell
Starring Dakota Gorman & Todd Terry

Horror

★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

DISCLAIMER:
The following essay may contain
what some might consider
SLIGHT SPOILERS.

Fantasia 2025 offered up a look at Brock Bodell’s Hellcat, an unsettling and thrilling ride through strange, potentially deadly territory. Bodell’s film begins with a young woman named Lena (Dakota Gorman) waking up in a trailer attached to a truck headed who knows where. A voice belonging to Clive (Todd Terry), the man in the truck towing the trailer, comes through an intercom to somewhat explain Lena’s predicament: she’s been seriously injured and if Clive doesn’t get her to a doctor, things will get far worse. With very little information, Lena tries to piece together what’s happening and whether Clive’s actually trying to help her like he claims.

Hellcat, beneath its wonderfully frantic horror-thriller exterior, is about the power of belief, both good and bad. Clive and Lena are each rattled by belief in their own ways. Not only that, their various beliefs are shattered to some extent. Hellcat also depicts how sometimes, no matter how crazy others believe we are, we have to stick to our beliefs until the bitter end in spite of the cost. Bodell rarely lets up to give the viewer time to breathe; however, when the time comes to draw one in, Hellcat is a fresh breath of horror air.
Belief is a major part of Hellcat in several compelling ways. A very intriguing piece of the film is how Bodell plays with the audience’s perception of Clive, who says things like “that China virus” and rants about “Berkeley nutjobs.” Belief is not only central to the story being told in Bodell’s film, it’s central to how the audience is meant to perceive Clive on the surface. The belief important to Hellcat‘s story itself is the way Lena and Clive each tie beliefs about themselves to other people. Clive has lost himself, partly in conspiracy theory, because of losing someone whom he says “gave me an identity.” Lena’s similarly adrift due to the loss of a loved one. Her journey trapped in that trailer becomes a journey trapped in her own head; one scene depicts this literally with images of Lena in funeral attire appearing in tableau within the mobile home, her psyche locked into the environment. The powers of belief waver at times in Hellcat, right up until the film’s shocking final act.

A great moment in the film involves Clive and the host of a radio show similar to Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM, as Clive’s told in no uncertain terms that the show is merely hawking paranormal belief to boost the number of listeners: “Y‘know this ain‘t exactly NPR.” While there’s more gravity connected to this moment within Hellcat, Bodell’s film, if only briefly, touches on grifters conning people into real, and dangerous, states of mind despite not believing in what they’re saying. This goes to the extreme in the film while it still reflects very real problems—Hellcat‘s radio host could be seen akin to someone like Alex Jones, just for the paranormal. At the same time, Clive’s ideas about a certain horrifying subject prove not to be so crazy once all is said and done, though that doesn’t mean his methods are perfect or non-destructive.

Bodell’s film is creepy and tense while it also has a sliver of warmth buried in its core. Hellcat deals with the highs and the lows of belief. Lena and Clive are forced to confront what they believe—not only about the terrifying matters at hand, but about themselves. In the face of their respective losses, they each face new personal worlds. And they have more in common than it first seems, too. Hellcat deals with two emotionally wounded people fleeing personal darkness who’ve collided in a twist of fate, and it depicts how their collision transforms them. This is a film that deals and plays with belief in order to ultimately expand what is possible, from the personal to the paranormal.