There’s a video on YouTube called Selfie from Hell. It’s a two-minute horror story in the vein of Lights Out or Tuck Me In, in which – and this might possibly count as a spoiler – a woman takes a selfie, and there’s a monster in it, and the monster eats her. I’m telling you this because Selfie from Hell is going to become a full-length feature.
The Selfie From Hell movie might be good – although given that its IMDb page contains the lines “Julia, an online vlogger from Germany” and “She … finds herself immersed deep in the web – too deep” let’s not get our hopes up – but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s called Selfie From Hell and, as such, is destined to join the ranks of other immediately dated quasi-viral horror films, alongside the upcoming Slender Man film. Here are some of Selfie From Hell’s new bedfellows.
Friend Request
When popular student Laura unfollows her weird classmate Marina on Facebook, Marina kills herself purely to send Laura status updates from beyond the grave.
Moral Always stay friends with everyone on Facebook, because you never know which of them will become undead demons from hell who can rewrite code simply to inconvenience you.
#Horror
When some students tag a less popular girl on Facebook, she decides to murder them all and then herself.
Moral Don’t tag anyone on Facebook on the off-chance that they’re murder-suicide fanatics that need the barest minimum excuse to kill people. Or just don’t use Facebook. Or, better yet, don’t watch any films that have a hashtag for a title. All in all, that probably seems like the safest bet all round.
Pulse
When popular student Josh kills himself with an ethernet cable, a group of friends including Kristen Bell and Christina Milian start to receive emails from him from beyond the grave. Whenever they turn on their computers, images of dead people start to appear. So they tape up their screens, but the dead people start printing selfies instead. They are relentless.
Moral There are dead people in your computer, and also Kristen Bell is better than this.
Smiley
If someone on Chatroulette types “I did it for the lulz” three times in a row, they’re visited by a murderer with a smiley emoji for a face, who then stabs them to death. Guess what? The murderer is Anonymous.
Moral Real-life internet organisations will literally stab you to death if you type something innocuous in a chatroom enough times.
Ratter
A ratter is someone who hacks into all your different cameras and then watches you. And this is exactly what happens to popular student Ashley Benson in this film of the same name. But in this case the ratter is also a murderer or something and it’s all very scary.
Moral Put tape over all your webcams, because everyone is a murderer.
Swipe
Swipe is the hottest new online dating app, but what recently bereaved student Anna doesn’t know is that stalkers use Swipe to stalk people. Soon a stalker has stalked her and tied her up but it’s OK because the police murder him.
Moral It’s harder for stalkers to stalk you via a dating app if you remember to delete the app. Not to be confused with the documentary series Swipe Right For Murder, which also exists.
