Fantasia Film Festival 2025 ‘Foreigner’ and ‘Hellcat’ Movie Reviews
Our Fantasia Film Festival 2025 coverage continues with two unique films that explore themes of isolation. The first is a haunting film about the struggles of assimilation faced by a child of migrants in a white suburban school. The other film centers on a 10 Cloverfield Lane-inspired narrative about a woman trapped inside a moving camper. Foreigner and Hellcat may differ in quality, but they demonstrate promising craftsmanship from the talent behind them. Here are our reviews of both films from Fantasia Fest 2025.
Foreigner review: One of the best offerings at Fantasia this year
Foreigner is not your typical horror movie. Similar to Get Out, its goal isn’t to evoke fear but to use horror as a tool for exploring individual experiences. With Get Out, Jordan Peele highlighted the artificiality of certain suburban liberals who claim “they don’t see color.” With Foreigner, the aim is to immerse viewers in the nightmare of trying to assimilate as an immigrant at a new school. The experience is not only impactful but also incredibly engaging.
Directed by Ava Maria Safaii, the film centers on Yasamin Karimi (Rose Dehgan), a Persian teenager who transfers to a new city in Canada, and she finds herself needing to make new friends. Set in the early 2000s, before the rise of the Internet and TikTok, the setting gives the story a unique perspective by placing the character amid the 9/11 Muslim panic.
The movie begins blending a strange mix of the horror atmosphere of Smile with the high school toxicity seen in Mean Girls. She meets Rachel (played by Chloe McLeod), a quick-talking popular girl who wears a devilish smile and shows a suspicious interest in Yasamin. The script features sharp dialogue, with Rachel quickly cutting through passive-aggressive, xenophobic questions while smiling as if she wants to steal Yasamin’s soul.
Cinematographer Saarthak Taneja beautifully captures the story, creating suspenseful camera techniques from ordinary scenes. At one point, Yasamin tries dyeing her hair, and the way Taneja moves the camera while the brush hits her strands feels intense.
The visual style resembles The Silence of the Lambs. For example, when Rachel and her twin followers question Yasamin, it invokes the feeling that they are staring into the viewer’s soul. This technique helps the audience empathize with Yasamin’s lonely situation.
The music by Finka Wood is outstanding. The score takes inspiration from John Carpenter‘s work in Halloween and Escape from New York, featuring unsettling piano synths. For example, one scene shows Yasamin sneaking down a hallway to avoid waking her father and grandmother. In any other movie, this scene might seem minor, but the score makes it surprisingly frightening.
Together with Rose Dehgan’s exceptional performance, these elements make Foreigner one of the best films at the Fantasia Festival this year. It is a thematically rich story about the loneliness of navigating the immigrant experience in a shallow and racist society. As a critic who is a disabled minority, I find some scenes very authentic, and they effectively portray the anxiety of trying to find a place that fears you because of ignorance.
Hellcat review: an engaging but flawed indie horror
Hellcat is the perfect premise for an indie film. The plot revolves around a single character trapped in one location for most of its runtime, while the protagonist attempts to understand the reasons for their captivity. For example, the Ryan Reynolds film Buried put the star in a coffin for the entire movie, with secondary characters appearing through phone calls. Hellcat employs a similar tactic but is narratively closer to 10 Cloverfield Lane. Despite its effectiveness in keeping the audience engaged, like Terrestrial, it falters in the third act.
The film follows Lena (Dakota Gorman), a woman who wakes up in the back of a moving camper with an infected wound and no memory of how she got there. As she regains her composure, Lena is greeted by a mysterious voice coming from an intercom hidden inside a stuffed wolf at the front of the camper.
The voice, calling himself Clive (Todd Terry), calmly explains her situation. He warns that the wound could cost her everything if he doesn’t get her to the right person for help. Lena notices she’s locked inside with no way out; she questions whether Clive is trustworthy and if her wound is a poison placed there by her supposed rescuer.
It’s within this questionable helper dynamic that influences from 10 Cloverfield Lane are evident. Similar to John Goodman‘s role in the Cloverfield sequel, the protagonist cannot decipher if Clive is being truthful about the nature of her wound. Instead of claiming the outside world has ended, the voice inside the intercom explains that the danger is Lena’s health and well-being.
For a film set primarily in one location, it moves at a decent pace. The script, by writer and director Brock Bodell, effectively keeps enough events unfolding to hold the viewer’s interest. For example, Lena occasionally hallucinates that someone she cares about is inside talking to her. These moments deepen the viewer’s empathy for her and her potential fate.
The cinematography and editing contribute to this momentum. Cinematographer Andrew Duensing plays with the camper’s color scheme during Lena’s good and bad visions. The edits intercut flashes of rapidly swimming blood cells as her wound worsens, intensifying her pain. Similar to the lighting, these internal bodily flashes shift with a feminine purple hue.
However, the final act is the film’s weakest part. It introduces a new threat that feels out of place with the rest of the story. The narrative choice is further weakened by some practical effects that don’t quite work. Nonetheless, given that it’s an indie film with a limited budget, the effects are understandable.
Overall, Hellcat shows Brock Bodell has a lot of promise as a filmmaker. Despite some issues in the third act, Gorman’s performance and Bodell‘s direction keep the film engaging.
Also check out: Fantasia Fest 2025 Review: Together Provokes Without Much Substance
