Hint: Never tell anyone to "calm down" if they're locked in your camper trailer.
Hellcat
The film makes its streaming debut Friday, August 14, only on Shudder.
In the dead of night, Lena finds herself tossed by a stranger into a camper trailer, which then speeds down a lonely road.
Quickly, she discovers that the trailer's single door and multiple windows are locked, and that someone has bandaged her arm for unknown reasons. Frantic, she begins screaming, until a mysterious voice emanating from a stuffed deer head mounted on a wall tells her to "calm down."
According to the voice, who later identifies himself as Clive, she has been "infected" with a serious ailment and she needs immediate help, in less than an hour, or something terrible will happen to her. She is likely contagious, which explains why he has her locked up.
Thus, he is taking her to a medical facility. For some reason, he has also taken her mobile phone and her other belongings.
Naturally, Lena is terrified. And the viewer is left wondering: Where can the film possibly go from here?
Happily for fans of tightly-constructed thrillers, writer/director Brock Bodell, making his feature debut, has diabolical ideas in mind that play very effectively within a three-act, 95-minute running time.
Dakota Gorman is magnetic as Lena, who soon reveals to Clive that she is pregnant, which doubles or triples her anxiety levels. As the situation continually upends her emotional stability, she remains a clear-thinking protagonist, though, never giving up on fighting or talking her way out of that oddly-furnished camper trailer, complete with a disco light-ball.
Both the actress and the character she plays inevitably remind me of Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in James Cameron's Aliens (1986) -- "Get away from her, you bitch!" -- only in this case, Lena is entirely alone. She is still facing an unknown foe, however, no matter how much Clive declares that he is doing this for her own good.
Indeed, Clive sounds like every father who has ever told a child that 'the medicine is for your own good' or 'spanking you hurts me more than it hurts you.' There is a weary, hurt quality in his character's voice that actor Todd Terry captures perfectly.
Though the third act falters a bit in its execution of an entirely convincing landing, writer/director Brock Bodell constructs a strong narrative with surprising turns that play with expectations while keeping the tension tightly-coiled.
When the movie concluded I had to remind myself to calm down.
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