Ahead of its World Premiere at Fantasia later this month, genre-bending first feature Hellcat gets a brand new teaser from Blue Finch Films.
The feature directorial debut of writer/editor/director Brock Bodell, Hellcat stars Dakota Gorman (Natural Disasters) as a woman in a very precarious situation:
Lena wakes up in a moving camper trailer with a horrifying wound. She’s warned by the driver that they have one hour to get to a doctor, or she’ll succumb to an unimaginably awful fate. As the pain sets in and reality begins to fray, who should really be afraid?
Director Bodell, a life-long horror fan, wrote Hellcat while living in Berlin, with the express goal of “making a producible, low budget genre film with heart for his directorial feature debut.” A full director's statement reveals more:
This film was written and directed first and foremost by a new father. So the themes of parenthood, change, loss, identity, fringe ideals – they’re all “on the dash” of Hellcat. Growing up in 1990’s Memphis, TN, I spent a large part of my childhood not knowing where I fit in. Navigating identity permeated through adulthood, and even more so now as a father.
With Hellcat, I wanted to explore the loss and rebirth of identity, and inject all those subsequent questions into two people, in two totally different realities trying their hardest to navigate their changing existence. In the film Clive confides his struggle with identity, after the loss of his wife- “My whole life I’ve defined myself by what others say about me. I know that’s not right… Do you think that when someone dies who defines you, they just take it with them? It just disappears into some void, like it never was?”
For a lot of people, I think the ever-changing nature of identity can be shaped by those around us- by society, the people we share time with, social media, politics, things, etc. But when that’s stripped away, and we look inward, how will we truly define ourselves?
A specific exploration of that theme in Clive’s tale shows a scenario many can relate to these days – a loved one being caught up in a group that doesn’t have their best interests at heart, leading them to a feeling of being cast aside. For Lena, it’s losing the foundation of her mother as a young woman at a crossroad in her young life. While the scenario is fantastical, the true heart of the film is wholly relatable, and that’s the type of story I yearn to tell.
I made Hellcat for everyone who’s ever lost anyone, including themselves.
Check out the teaser for Hellcat below, and don't miss it if you're heading to Fantasia at the end of the month:
