Director – Nicholas Tana (The Director , We Are Animals)
Starring – Nicholas Tana, Lisa Younger (Cold Creepy Feeling, Superhot Apocalypse), and Adrienne Barbeau (The Fog, Escape from New York)
Release Date – 2018
Rating – 2/5
I get a lot of movies in to review from Wild Eye. Some do an amazing job of stirring my imagination while others completely turn me obsessive. Sometime ago I received the horror comedy Hell’s Kitty from Wild Eye for review. The artwork for the film really peaked my interest but I just never got the desire to watch it. When I was in my October horror binge I decided that this peaky horror comedy about a possessed cat would be the perfect movie to finish the month with. I want to thank Wild Eye for once again sending this one over.
**Spoiler Alert** The film follows a man who is very attached to his cat Angel. However, Angel is very protective of her owner and when any woman gets too close she attacks them. He tries several different suggestions but nothing works until he discovers that the cat is actually possessed by a scorned lover that killed herself and possessed the cat when she realized she would never be loved by him like he loves the cat. **Spoiler Alert**
I knew this wasn’t going to be a film that I would want to revisit every October but I thought it was going to be something I had a lot of fun with. Sadly, it was not. In fact, I feel like it was never intended to be a film and some digging around I can see that it wasn’t. In fact, it looks like it was a web-series of sorts that was put together into a film. Maybe if I was to check it out in the original format I would enjoy it better than I did.
The acting in this one is pretty solid but so many of the characters are underdeveloped. The main characters throughout the film have a solid enough back story that fits in with the story. Sadly, the film offers up so many cameros with some memorable names in horror. These additions seem to be tossed in rather quickly with little to no benefit to the story. A cameo for cameo’s sake. The acting for those are solid but they can be removed from the film and nothing would change story wise.
The story for this one doesn’t have enough substance to run the length that it does. A possessed cat attacking women is fun in theory but dragging that story out for almost 90 minutes is a very big stretch. The unnecessary cameos, dry scenes where the lead and his best friend talk about the same situation multiple times, the highly sexualized therapy sessions that repeat themselves, are all ways to drag the film out but its recycling the same scenes over and over. If the film was around 30 minutes and the pointless scenes removed I could see myself loving this story. However, watching the same scenes over and over again while the cast wears different clothes is redundent.
Finally, the film has some make-up effects throughout and some prosthetics but nothing memorable or that stands out. The make-up effects we do get, mostly cat scratches and the like, look great but nothing we haven’t seen before. Overall, Hell’s Kitty had an interesting story but the execution is just all wrong. It’s cool seeing some well known horror names make appearances but they feel like they are tossed in last minute with nothing to contribute to the story. This is one I cannot recommend.
