Single Location Horror thrives in the independent space and Brock Bodell’s Hellcat is a great example of how much story you can wring out of one small room and a handful of committed performers. Celebrating its World Premiere at the 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival, Hellcat features less actors than you can count on one hand, with a couple clever uses of voice actors to help fill out its confined world. It’s a tight thriller with a really strong hook, and a paranoid ticking clock that creeps toward disaster with every passing second.
Hellcat stars Dakota Gorman (Natual Disasters) as Lena, who wakes up locked in a moving trailer, with no memory of how she was kidnapped. The Driver (Todd Terry, Breaking Bad) hauling the ramshackle airstream trailer down the highway speaks to Lena over an intercom, but nothing he says is very reassuring. He tells her that she has been infected, that her prospects are not good, and that the infection spreads very rapidly. Thankfully, he knows a doctor about an hour down the road that should be able to get Lena the help she needs. Of course, this is all coming from someone who has taken her against her will, which isn’t exactly Good Samaritan behavior.
Ratcheting up tension and increasing stakes are how single location stories succeed and Hellcat hits the ground running. There is no cold open, no pre-amble, no fluff. We fade in from black and we are literally barreling down the highway at 60 mph. Obviously, Lena doesn’t trust this mysterious voice warning her to stay calm and avoid attempts to escape, but once she notices the black veins creeping up her arm from a bandaged wound, she knows she’s really in trouble. And as she explores more of the trailer and spends more time chatting with The Driver, Lena realizes that no matter his true intentions, her life is in immediate danger and she can’t just sit back and enjoy the ride if she wants to live through the night.
Hellcat holds pretty true to its single location promise and finds fun ways to add more characters through radio personalities and phone calls. It’s also makes a brilliant artistic choice to show flashes of Lena’s thoughts and memories as though they also took place inside the trailer. A Chef’s Kiss touch that I hope Bodell (who wrote, directed, and edited the feature) is super proud of. The mystery of what exactly happened to Lena is slowly revealed and the implications of that mystery shift the story into a new gear entirely, but still remains intimate and personal with it’s limited cast. I’m a big fan of single location stories because it’s always a blast to see how far a storyteller can push their characters and Hellcat is another great showcase of how to build unexpected surprises and clever twists with limited resources.
“Another great example of how to build unexpected surprises and clever twists with limited resources”
Brock Bodell’s Hellcat celebrated its World Premiere at the 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival. Click HERE to follow our continued coverage of the festival and let us know what you would do if you were kidnapped and locked in the back of a strangers camper van in The Official Nightmare on Film Street Discord!
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