Selah and the Spades Is Spellbindingly Suspenseful

The kids at Haldwell boarding school are not your average bored teenagers. They don’t just have uniforms and a challenging curriculum; they have an entire secret society, complete with factions, treaties, and mysterious references to a girl no one wants to talk about. At the center of it all is Selah Summers (Lovie Simone), leader of the Spades, the faction that handles acquiring drugs and distributing them among the student body—for a price, of course. Since both she and her right-hand man, Maxxie (Jharrel Jerome), will be graduating in a few months, she’s looking for a successor.

Lovie Simone as Selah Summers. Amazon Studios

Enter Paloma (Celeste O’Connor), a new day student at Haldwell on scholarship. She catches Selah’s eye while taking yearbook photos, and the charged, tumultuous friendship they form has the potential to alter not just the two of them but the entire network the students have dedicated themselves to protecting.

A first feature for writer and director Tayarisha Poe, Selah and the Spades, available to stream on Amazon Prime Video starting April 17, is impossible to look away from. The eerie mood, compelling characters, and aesthetic all work together for artful and engaging suspense. There’s an undercurrent of danger throughout most of the movie, but it hits the sweet spot of maintaining a thriller’s energy while having almost no violence. What violence does exist is nearly always implied rather than explicitly displayed, which enhances the story’s mystery and keeps you vigilantly tuned in to the characters.

Celeste O’Connor as Paloma. Amazon Studios

The characters themselves are fascinating, with standout performances from the central trio of Lovie Simone, Celeste O’Connor, and Jharrel Jerome. Simone in particular plays what could easily have been an overdone trope—the powerful and perfectionist head cheerleader—with multifaceted depth and subtlety. The chemistry of the whole cast feels both realistically grounded and preternaturally unsettling; the tensions among them are sufficiently weighty, which highlights the joy of the moments when they allow themselves to trust each other as well as their cohesion against the adults in the movie. The adults themselves show up rarely but with skillful effect, with Jesse Williams as the disconcerting Haldwell headmaster and Gina Torres as Selah’s mother.

Paloma, Selah, and Maxxie. Amazon Studios

Aesthetically the movie is breathtaking, both visually and in sound design. The creepy, lush tone of the setting is established immediately, but Poe continually finds fresh and inventive ways to frame and light the actors in the familiarly rich backdrop of the school’s ivy-covered stone walls. Ominous metronomic noises will occasionally score seemingly benign moments, and the music beautifully pulls us in to the characters’ experiences.

There is a bit of a third act lag that may simply be the result of an incredibly gripping second-act climax. The intrigue of watching Paloma and Selah’s relationship escalate as Selah struggles to maintain her power position in the faction system loses some of its propulsion as the characters navigate the fallout of one incident while interminably moving toward another one. There were also a few leftover plot threads that were never quite braided back in, but I actually found this to be an effective method of maintaining the film’s mysterious edge. However, other viewers may find this frustrating, and a bit more cohesion might have helped the ending land a little more steadily.

Amazon Studios.

According to Variety, Poe is currently working on expanding Selah and the Spades into an Amazon Studios series, which I’m cautiously optimistically about. As with all expansions of well-told stories, I worry that stretching it will damage the fabric, but it’s also clear that there’s a lot Poe is interested in exploring in the world of these characters, and her style is so compelling that I’m excited to see where she’ll take it over the course of a series. Regardless of how the show turns out, it’s refreshing to see a filmmaker tell stories about teens and danger without feeling the need to endlessly escalate brutal trauma or bizarre depravity. Selah and the Spades’ characters and artistic imagination will keep you on the edge of your seat and thinking about it long after the credits have rolled.