In 2024, Hellmade wrote and directed 7 Days of Suffering, a mid-length extreme horror piece made on a shoestring budget, leaning heavily into a lo-fi aesthetic built on analog-style filters, glitch effects, and a strong VHS feel.
Clocking in at around 36 minutes, the film is aimed at a niche audience used to underground productions, where visual impact and intent matter more than technical polish.
7 Days of Suffering is built around a seven-day structure, each chapter pushing the violence further, as a masked killer invades the home of a woman and her children.
From a bathtub killing driven by blood loss to full dismemberment, the film delivers a series of disturbing set pieces, made even harsher by lingering close-ups that dwell on the details of the wounds.
The end result is a rough, uneven piece that shifts between more effective moments and others clearly held back by its amateur nature. The violence is constant and deliberate, but it's mainly shaped through a grimy, degraded aesthetic that echoes certain strands of European extreme cinema, without ever reaching the same level of intensity or control.
The soundtrack moves between melancholic passages and bursts of metal, creating an interesting contrast with the visuals, even if it doesn’t always feel perfectly balanced.
Beyond its content, it's clear that 7 Days of Suffering comes from a small, independent, almost family-driven production, and that context gives the film a more genuine edge. The behind-the-scenes moments, lighter and more spontaneous, help defuse some of the on-screen brutality, grounding it in something more intimate and almost domestic.
This isn't a film for everyone, and it doesn't try to be. It's rough, imperfect, and aimed at viewers drawn to extreme experiences in their most raw and handcrafted form, far removed from any kind of industry standard, where its lack of polish becomes part of its appeal.
