Private Project

Suicide Club

Locked in her flat for several years, a reclusive and depressed young woman stumbles upon a mysterious web community called Suicide Club. According to an urban myth, the Club can grant death to those wishing for it. But she will soon realise that these "cyber suicides" are actually murders and that she will be forced to become a murderer herself if she wants to survive.

  • Maximilian von Vier
    Director
    The Host, Sanctuary
  • Maximilian von Vier
    Writer
  • Maximilian von Vier
    Producer
  • Klariza Clayton
    Key Cast
    Skins, Harry Brown
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Genres:
    psychological thriller, thriller, horror, suspense
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 32 minutes 14 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    August 20, 2017
  • Production Budget:
    30,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Distribution Information
  • Wild Eye Releasing (from Spring 2018)
    Country: Worldwide
    Rights: Video / Disc, Free TV
Director Biography - Maximilian von Vier

Maximilian von Vier was born in Switzerland in 1982 and started his artistic career as a comic book author. A self-taught artist and a life-long nomad, Max follows his passion for visual storytelling across three continents. He learns Japanese manga techniques in Tokyo, European comics in France and filmmaking in London.
Max is the author of a dozen feature scripts in various genres, including the dark fantasy animation project Matilda Corkscrew, winner of two awards at the 2017 Sitges Film Festival Pitchbox competition and the 2017 BIFAN Film Festival in Korea.
Max's completely self-produced debut feature Suicide Club won a total of 13 awards, including Best Feature and Best Director, and is now available on VOD worldwide.
Max is currently in preproduction of a thriller produced by Bazelevs Productions (Unfriended, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter) and a sci-fi thriller starring award-winning actress Scout Taylor-Compton (Halloween, The Runaways).
Max is also an accomplished storyboard and concept artist, and has collaborated with filmmakers such as Oscar-nominated actor James Franco and Swiss director Ivan Engler to help bring their vision onto the screen.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Suicide Club is a script that came to life in the glow of a flashlight, on the flanks of a Hawaiian volcano. The story came to me during a backpacking trip around the world, while camping in the middle of the Kilauea jungle with very limited electricity, lots of crawlers everywhere and absolutely no Internet. It was meant as an exercise in simplicity: if you can do less, you can do more. Let’s see how globetrotting and filmmaking mix together.
For this script, I set myself a challenge: to write the cheapest feature I could possibly come up with, in order to have a film that I could finance myself upon my return to Europe. The concept came to me rather quickly: a young woman trapped in her room by a long depression becomes the target of a cyber-crime gang after she stumbles upon a mysterious web community, rumoured to be able to grant death to those wishing for it: the Suicide Club. She soon discovers these so-called “suicides” are actually murders, and will eventually find a renewed will to live through her struggle to escape from the bloodthirsty members of the Club.
The story explores themes that anyone who’s ever owned a computer or a smartphone can relate to, in addition to very contemporary social issues such as cyber-crime, the trivialisation of violence, voyeurism, mental illness, women issues, social and cyber-bullying, loneliness and anonymity, the schism between the real and virtual world, and the manipulative power of mass media.
As a director, I envisioned this film as a dark and spooky urban tale, with an eerie and oppressing atmosphere, a bit in the vein of a very confined The Ring. This is an urban and contemporary tale and that’s how it should look like: dark and stylish.
Suicide Club is a true guerrilla/indie and transcultural film: I wrote it on the road and fully financed it myself doing freelance work and volunteering around the world. I decided I could do without a home or material possessions for a couple of years, and that I'd just keep backpacking from one country to the next until I managed to gather the 30 000 € needed to make the film. So it was very rewarding to see the finished movie win a bunch of festival awards (13 in total), and I'd love to keep sharing if with audiences worldwide.