Horror Movie Review: Selfie from Hell (2018)

A few years ago, there was a brief run of viral horror shorts that captured the imagination of the wider audience. So popular were these shorts that one, Lights Out was turned into a fairly successful big budget, feature length movie (read our review here).

The craze was short-lived & near the end imitators & copycats with one aim, to make you jump, kept turning up. What also helped it die were the thousands of online videos that cropped up of people ‘reacting’ to these. Watch a handful & you’ll want to never watch another again.

One of the more popular ones was Selfie from Hell. A minute-long film that focused on a selfie-snapping woman who notices a figure appear behind her in the photos. Confused she takes more pictures, each time the figure appearing closer until she is attacked by a zombie-looking creature. It was effective because it was short.

Hoping to follow in the footsteps of Lights Out, Selfie from Hell has now been turned into a full-length feature film. Unlike Lights Out though it has appeared with little fanfare, is clearly low budget & can’t sustain its 70-minute run time. A real problem considering that an hour and 10 minutes is very short for a horror movie anyway!

Prepare to be annoyed. Selfie from Hell has just one trick & it utilises it continuously. Jump scares.

Julia (Meelah Adams) is a YouTube blogger who falls mysteriously ill when she visits her cousin Hannah in the US. Julia is bed-ridden & refuses to wake up, something that puzzles Hannah (Alyson Walker) as she often hears her talking, receives phone calls & texts from her.

Desperate to find out what is wrong with her she starts to research what Julia was working on before she got ill. Something that will see her delve deep into the ‘dark web’ & discover just what can come about for the selfie obsessed.

There’s an underlying message in Selfie from Hell, something about the youth of today & their obsession with social media & capturing every moment of their lives, no matter how mundane. This wouldn’t be such a problem if we hadn’t a glutton of similar releases over the last couple of years. Friend Request, Unfriended, Hacked and Smiley to name a few that we’ve covered.

Unoriginal story & pointless message aside, Selfie from Hell is already dated both visually & in tone. The paranormal/creepy horror cycle is running out of steam & releases like this all but confirm it’s high time.

The acting isn’t terrible but it’s not memorable either thanks to characters that are bland. Thinking back to the movie I can’t remember just who was who, they’re that forgettable.

Selfie from Hell is slow, really slow & 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 & 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.

It quickly becomes tiresome.

Perhaps the biggest crime that Selfie from Hell commits though is how it ends. A finale that just peters out leaving you with the horrid feeling that you’ve just wasted your time.

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