Amazon’s ‘Selah and the Spades’ Is the Next Teen Cult Classic

Selah and the Spades on Amazon Prime is weird. But it’s, like, the good kind of weird. It’s the kind of weird that earns over-edited gifsets on Tumblr and lifelong fans. In other words, it’s cult-classic weird.

Written and directed by Tayarisha Poe in her feature debut, Selah and the Spades premiered at Sundance over a year ago, and was finally released digitally by Amazon Studios today, free for Amazon Prime subscribers to stream. Newcomer Lovie Simone stars as a high school senior at a private boarding school in Pennsylvania, where organized crime is the norm. But these crimes don’t involve guns—they involve cheating on tests, gambling on school sports, partying in the dorm basements, and access to booze and drugs.

If I were a 14-year-old high school freshman—an age when I thought 17-year-old high school seniors were the epitome of cool—I would be fully obsessed with Selah Summers and her gang of cool-kid bullies. Selah’s crew (“The Spades”) are responsible for providing the student body with drugs and alcohol. Her right-hand man is her best friend Maxxie (Jharrel Jerome, who recently won an Emmy for When They See Us) and her arch-nemesis is Bobby (Ana Mulvoy-Ten), the leader of the party gang. Selah’s main concern in her senior year is not her prom dress, but her replacement. Who will she pick to take over The Spades so that her legacy lives on?

It reminds me of The Clique, a book series I devoured as a preteen, knowing full well that high school would be nothing like the book described, but reveling in the drama none the less. But Selah and the Spades goes far beyond pulpy teen drama—it’s stylish, bold, experimental, and anchored by a beautiful, talented cast. I’ve been obsessed with Jerome since Moonlight, and he does not disappoint. Simone, who also starred in the OWN series Greenleaf, is phenomenal in a difficult role. She commands every single scene, even the weird, experimental stuff. It just works.

Watching the film as an adult, there’s something hilarious about the way Selah, along with the other clique leaders at her fancy school, discuss issues like the senior class prank with utmost seriousness, as if they were mob bosses. And indeed, when one student neglects to pay the Spades for his product, they rough him up in the stairwell. (He tells the principal he that he fell down the north stairs. There’s no place for rats in the mafia.)

Selah and the Spades is not a comedy, but it’s also not not a comedy. Poe is clearly aware that these teens are being ridiculous, but she’s also aware that teens love it when teens on TV are ridiculous. High school social status may not be as serious nor as dangerous as the Corleone family in The Godfather, but it sure feels that way when you’re young. Poe validates those emotions by making this high-stakes teenage fantasy a reality, and at the same time, she pokes fun at their absurdity. Of course real teenagers would never act like this. But it’s just so fun to pretend.

Watch Selah and the Spades on Amazon Prime Video