You awake to find yourself jostling around in a trailer. A disembodied voice emanating from a disembodied canine head informs you that you’ve been infected, and you’re on a clock to get to the only doctor who can help you. Stay calm lest you make it worse.

Lena (Dakota Gorman), a no-nonsense resourceful woman, does what we probably hope we’d all do and struggles to find her way out of the moving trailer using her wits and the random items tossed about her new cage. Lena concedes she is struggling physically, but it’s because of her pregnancy and not due to the mysterious infection the voice of the driver insists she has. The clock is ticking as Lena moves farther away from any civilization in which she belongs, and without her phone or a clear view to the outside, she is running out of time and completely at the whim of a ruthless driver who insists what he is doing is to keep her safe.

The chamber piece, or single location horror, becomes a battle of wits on the open road that leaves Lena struggling for a way out while also struggling with what is happening to her body. While the idea of a trapped person trying desperately to figure out what is happening while using limited items available to them feels much like Oxygen or Buried, Hellcat has even more in common with 10 Cloverfield Lane as the audience and lead struggle to decipher if their captor is helping them, trapping them, or a bit of both. Clive (the driver played by Todd Terry) is balanced but desperate and reads sometimes like a paternal character doing his best, but his best comes by way of threats, drugs, and off-screen violence.

Hellcat is mostly simple which can feel stretched in for a feature film runtime, but the powerhouse performance by Gorman makes the excursion an event. Almost all of the movie’s emotional weight comes from the lead’s stellar performance, one that’s peppered with extreme physicality.

Writer and director Brock Bodell has made a movie, like the aforementioned Cloverfield installment, which intentionally leaves the audience guessing. As Lena makes her way around the trailer while at the behest of Clive’s small cues, the audience is meant to attempt to decipher what caused Lena’s bite and why Clive is so insistent on his actions. The movie only gives the audience the information it wants them to have, and does so with breadcrumbs and in waves, then asks them whether they would subscribe to the same conclusions as Clive. It’s a fun game that makes it worth looking through the leads and into the background.

Hellcat is a stripped-down horror tale meant not to be slotted into a category until its larger reveals become broadly known in the zeitgeist. Its horror comes from toggling the true imminent threats and having its lead struggle along with the audience to decipher the real enemy.

Hellcat screened at the Fantasia Film Festival