‘Hellcat’ review: Dakota Gorman shines in this microbudget monster flick

Brock Bodell’s Hellcat never breaks new ground but has fun navigating claustrophobia and classic tropes on a limited budget.

Lina (Dakota Gorman), unexpectedly pregnant and still reeling from the death of her mother, just needs a weekend away. That doesn’t work out. By the time Hellcat opens, she’s locked in a modified Airstream trailer with no clear means of escape. Her unseen driver, Clive (Todd Terry), communicates with her via an intercom. He claims she’s been infected by a mysterious illness and he’s taking her to receive treatment, but Lina has doubts. Especially when she catches a glimpse of another woman (Liz Atwater) locked in a different part of the trailer.

Neither can fully see or hear the other, and a claustrophobic game of tug-of-war ensues. Lina will earn Clive’s trust, then get caught in another escape attempt. Clive will earn Lina’s trust, then get caught in another lie. Clive seems willing to kill to keep Lina locked up, and he also seems genuinely afraid of what could happen if she escapes. And it’s clear that something is starting to go seriously wrong with Lina. But what?

The basic premise and structure of writer/director Brock Bodell‘s script means that this is largely Dakota Gorman’s show. The film is halfway done before the audience is fully introduced to another character. It’s a bit further still before we actually get a real glimpse beyond the confines of the cramped trailer.

Dakota Gorman delivers a fantastic central performance in Hellcat.

Thankfully, Gorman has no problem rising to the challenge. The actress brings real tension and claustrophobia to her performance, and the film is at its best when it’s just Gorman finding every possible way to walk through a single room. She’s an incredible asset to the film — especially when paired with Andrew Duensing’s cinematography. One of the most exciting parts of Hellcat’s wide release is the potential for her to open up to even larger roles in the future.

Todd Terry is also a highlight here. His character navigates a fairly delicate balancing act of earning lots of audience distaste when he’s unseen and then overcoming that to earn sympathy once he actually appears. Plenty of actors would be tempted to lean to far in either direction. But too detestable of a character would ruin the third act, while too sympathetic of one would ruin everything else. The script itself occasionally stumbles in this transition but Terry is solid. And it’s quite obvious the entire film could have faltered with someone else in the role.

Hellcat only runs ninety minutes but still feels like it’s struggling to pad for time. Some scenes drag out a good deal longer than they should. There are montage sequences that don’t seem to serve any purpose except stretching the film to that hour-and-a-half mark.

The film industry has a runtime problem.

This isn’t a unique problem. The entire film industry now appears to be bogged down by the idea that this is the minimum length of a movie. Even children’s films are being regularly stretched to the two-hour mark for no good reason. This is a problem we created for ourselves; horror just tends to offer the most potent examples of why it’s unfair.

The film actually stumbles into a pretty natural denouement around seventy minutes in, and there’s the obvious question of how much more confident Hellcat could have been had it been allowed to clock out at that point. Instead it kicks around for another twenty minutes, forcing Gorman and Terry to stall in a way audiences never would have asked from Boris Karloff or Christopher Lee or any of the horror actors who were never expected to hit this minimum runtime.

The bottom line.

Bodell’s script also never quite manages to stray from beyond the comfort of established tropes, but that’s largely fine. Few horror fans were ever going to be all that surprised by the outcome anyway. What they are going to show up for is the strength of the cast and how well Bodell manages to direct such a limited budget. To that end, sticking with things viewers are familiar with only serves to bolster just how impressive the film’s strengths actually are. That’s more than enough to make up for the Hellcat‘s shortcomings.

Hellcat is available to stream now on Shudder. Watch the trailer here.

Images courtesy of Shudder.

Brogan Luke Bouwhuis

Brogan Luke Bouwhuis is a writer and film programmer whose frequent pop culture deep dives have allowed him to write about everything from the Richard Gere gerbil rumor to the history of the holiday yule log video. He co-hosts the Franchise Fiends podcast, co-captains the narrative shorts program at the Slamdance Film Festival, and co-created three children with his wife, Jessica.