HELLCAT (2025)

3 stars

Blue Finch Film Releasing. Digital. 14th August

HELLCAT is one of those horror movies that starts with a good idea but then loses its way.

A pick-up truck pulling a large, rather rundown, old caravan trailer. A woman, Lena (Dakota Gorman), awakens in the rattling camper. She has a bandage on her arm. She is understandably distressed as she doesn’t know where she is, or how she got there. The door is padlocked and screaming out doesn’t help.

Then a voice of over a speaker – Clive (Todd Terry), the owner of the mobile home being pulled along. He says she has been ‘infected’ and tells her he found her on a campsite and brought her back and attended to her wounds. They have less than an hour to get to a hospital to see a doctor

She then suddenly keels over as she is getting agitated – apparently it is important to keep her heart rate down as the infection affects her.

Then she reveals something that changes the complexion of things.

What is really going on? Is Clive telling the truth or is there more to this situation? A later discovery seems to point to it not being what her captor is telling her.

Then partway through an inference is dropped that looks to make this intriguing, closed location thriller more interesting and complex – but it goes nowhere unfortunately. A great premise and a strong, committed performance by Gorman is wasted on a script that sets up a mystery and then doesn’t deliver. The ending made no sense to me.

Steve Kirkham