‘Pleasure is the only thing worth dying for’
Selfie from Hell is a 2017 Canadian horror film written and directed by Erdal Ceylan (Demon’s Dawn), based on his 2015 short of the same title. The movie stars Alyson Walker, Tony Giroux and Meelah Adams.
Plot:
In an apartment, a young woman takes a selfie on her mobile phone. However, she is alarmed when she notices a shadowy figure lurking in the background of the shot…
Reviews [may contain spoilers]:
” …attempts to be current with all the cell technology and selfies craze, while shamelessly borrowing from such genre classics as Shutter and The Ring, but it miserably fails to merge its gimmicky ideas, not to mention the acting and CGIs are equally as dodgy, and the scares are virtually zero.” CineMarvellous!
“Nothing makes Selfie from Hell a more exhausting experience than its criminally redundant overreliance on absolutely egregious jump scares. I legitimately cannot fathom how any filmmaker can sit in an edit bay, amp an ear-aching audio cue to yet another jump cut, and still think, “Yep, we’re doing solid work here” after the 45th empty A/V shock. Coming as no surprise given its skeletal origin, Selfie from Hell is a one-trick pony whose poor horse is flogged to death mercilessly before ever leaving its stable.” 30/100 Culture Crypt
“Selfie from Hell is slow, really slow and you’ll quickly tire of characters sitting in front of computers. These should build tension but they don’t because this movie only knows how to do one thing and that is jump scares. Selfie from Hell is filled with them from the moment it begins to the moment it ends, always with the same horrid screech of music or loud thump.” Games, Brrraaains & A Head-Banging Life
Buy DVD: Amazon.co.uk
“At its most creative, Selfie hints at grisly abstractions recalling David Lynch and Under the Skin. But everything is so rushed, eros-free, and sketchy, the filmmakers must rely on booming sound effects and tired found-footage tropes to sell a story that, scarily enough, didn’t quite make it out of screenwriting purgatory.” Georgia Straight
“The film builds up with passable effect but then tapers off at an ending that fails to give us many clues about who the sinister people from The Black Room are or the nature of the cursed selfies.” Moria
” …the true fail of this film is the ending, or should I say the last 20 minutes or so, which is where things start to peter out. But you would think that since it gets kind of chaotic during this part of the film that it would get better (something like Oculus). It doesn’t. It really doesn’t. It just gets more confusing and rather bland.” The Other View
“ …Selfie from Hell does not even attempt to make the story remotely interesting. It’s just Hannah figuring out technology and feeling jumpy at every given occasion, and her cousin slowly dying on her bed. Selfie from Hell is a lazy horror movie that displays zero imagination from the creators.” Ready Steady Cut!
“Production elements like lighting and sound were also decent which, as we’ve seen, isn’t always the case with low-budget films in historic homes. To be honest, this movie was its own worst enemy. Too many ideas, all of them incompletely presented, vying for attention. The end result being a giant case of… Huh?” Scariest Things
Release:
Selfie from Hell was released on DVD by Lionsgate on 19 February 2018. It is currently available on Netflix.
Trailer:
Ceylan’s short film has had over 19 million YouTube views.
