So now it’s up to Hannah, with the help from tech expert and charming on-line nice guy Trevor (Tony Giroux) to pickup where Julia left off. To say more would not only be a spoiler, but would reveal that after a certain point in the film, I simply couldn’t be certain as to what was going on. Hardly matters – I don’t need to understand why someone’s chasing me through a dark alley with a hatchet to know that I should run. Point is, for all it’s foibles Selfie from Hell still scared me – left me turning on all the lights and checking whatever noise was creeping up behind me (it was always the cat) despite watching it in the middle of a bright afternoon in my own home.
It’d be easy to dismiss this film on the basis of budget: It’s home movie quality will likely turn off some viewers; the occasional slip into unnecessary plot points that have characters separating without any particular payoff or the news of Hannah’s mother’s recent death offering nothing other than to explain why Hannah lives alone, and an overbearing soundtrack that accents each and every jump scare with the blast of a full on orchestrated chord.
Still, Selfie is a creepy little saga with moments exceeding the D.I.Y. budget constraints the film is clearly chained to. Ceylan can (and does) turn a well lit comfortable room into a place as unnerving as an abandoned concrete warehouse, or a basement workshop (We get both). He seems to have an inherent understanding that setting up the calm is as essential as the actual storm. His jump scares – aside from the blast of volume – are effectively staged and delivered. Most successful is the encroaching villain who is neither hidden nor seen – a remarkable series of shots that reveal and conceal before either registers fully on the viewers brain. I’m overstating the point, but I think Hitchcock would have really appreciated that.
No matter what you might think of the film, you are going to want to see it to the end.
READ FULL ARTICLE OF THOM ERNST HERE