As with many people who grew up in the ’90s, horror movies were a massive part of my upbringing. If it wasn’t getting scared to death by the Tales From The Darkside intro, it was Jason Voorhees being my horror hero. There was just something about the golden age of video stores and cable TV. Anyone born in the ’80s seemed automatically drawn to the Hollywood macabre.
But despite consuming so much horror-adjacent content at such an early age, something much more sinister sat on those dusty shelves just beyond my reach. It was a 1978 shockumentary that took things a step further. The legendary whispers of Faces Of Death felt like a completely different ball game.
The lore (or marketing gimmick) of that movie and its subsequent sequels was that they were “real.”
While such claims should have been horrifying in and of themselves, they surprisingly didn’t pique my curiosity. I liked my horror to be fake and, by extension, safe. The idea of real people getting severely injured or killed was more gross than scary. Thus, I was truly terrified by the people who preferred these supposedly real-life depictions of death instead of horror movies. What kind of person could find such behavior entertaining? That is the inquiry driving Daniel Goldhaber’s recontextualized, quasi-remake of Faces Of Death.
First and foremost, Faces Of Death 2026 is not in documentary form.
Which thankfully meant no real footage of violence or death. In this reimagining, Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a content moderation firm where she and a team of technicians anonymously review videos uploaded across the internet. It’s a grueling, soul-sucking existence sifting through the digital dregs so the rest of the world doesn’t have to.
The horror shifts from psychological to visceral when a series of hyper-realistic videos pop up across various platforms. The more videos Margot analyzes, the more real the footage seems. As the videos pour in, she’s convinced she is no longer watching rage bait but a serial killer in real time. Suddenly, the line between content creation and murder blurs, and it becomes a race against time to stop a grizzly serial killer. If not, she will become the star of his nightmareish remake of the VHS cult classic, Faces Of Death.
By ditching the documentary format of the original, Faces Of Death uses the meta approach as a springboard to go all-in on its motif. Despite being a slasher film at its core, this iteration presents itself as a psychological thriller more than anything else. There is no mystery and absolutely no twist in its plot. In fact, the viewer already knows who the killer is before we see a single person killed. Even though that takes some of the wind out of its sails, the film does a good enough job setting its small yet unsettling plot in motion without haste. It’s not so much a body-count movie with rules and tropes, but a tech noir. Think of it as Se7en for the influencer generation.
With its brisk runtime and the mystery pre-trimmed, the film misses some opportunities.
By already knowing who the killer is, we get more time seeing Arthur Spevak (played wonderfully by Dacre Montgomery) being a depraved ghoul. Somewhere between Saw’s Jigsaw and American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, Arthur is a cool, calculated killer, always 2 steps ahead. Meanwhile, Margot isn’t a traditional final girl. She’s a human being who underthinks action while overthinking hypothetical scenarios. Fortunately, she has just enough backstory to keep her do-gooder-ness from being obnoxious. Is she an interesting protagonist? Not really, but anyone sharing the screen with Montgomery in this role would have their work cut out for them.
Unfortunately, the more time the film spends building toward a confrontation between these two characters, the less the audience cares. Margot’s story is fine and all, but to be honest, Faces Of Death would’ve worked much better (and been scarier) if the entire film had followed Arthur’s journey of recreating scenes from the original film. The social commentary is there, but it’s cut short in order to have more action on screen. This approach devalues the action because the meta-commentary is often so on-the-nose that the payoffs feel rushed and underwhelming.
Oddly enough, the biggest villain in Faces Of Death is every plot point working against each other.
Montgomery devours the screen, and the commentary is timely, but what’s the point if each element contradicts everything? In fact, the gore of Faces Of Death is surprisingly tame. Outside of a few flashes of visceral horror on computer screens early in the film, the rest of the violence is mostly implied. That’s not to say it’s a walk in the park, but most of the scares come in the form of Hitchcockian build-up. That would be okay with any other film, but why dilute things here, of all places? There’s a specific expectation tied to the legacy of Faces Of Death, but sadly, they’re not met.
Despite the film’s internal narrative conflicts, the haunting, almost dream-like quality of Isaac Bauman’s cinematography elevates it above your standard slasher fare. The Stranger Things-esque soundtrack from Gavin Brivik also adds to the ominous vibe, but never really commits to its own promises. Charli XCX’s brief role is fun, and there are even bits of dark humor for levity. At its best, it captures the cold, sterile meta-commentary that Scream 5, 6, and 7 desperately wanted to achieve but ultimately failed to grasp. But at its worst, I was left waiting for something to happen; more of Arthur on the screen would’ve helped tremendously.
To be clear, Faces of Death isn’t a terrible film.
It’s just a deeply confused one where neither commentary nor visceral scares reign supreme. On paper, a modern remake of this particular franchise doesn’t make much sense anyway. The original film was later revealed to be staged, as its guerrilla marketing was a cash-grabbing tool. And yet, there’s plenty to say about society’s fixation with death and reality. This movie should have been an opportunity to have an uncomfortable conversation about both by pointing the finger at ourselves. Of course, it’s 2026, and we’re well beyond the novelty of the internet. Not only is depravity all but common, but we’re all just a little desensitized if not completely.
Society is so far removed from morbid curiosity that exploring the franchise’s brand of taboo feels almost generic and outdated. Think about it: Most aspects of contemporary entertainment and communication are based around the consumption of reality through social media. Fast-paced video outlets like TikTok are rotting everyone’s brains faster than you can rewind a videotape. We really don’t need any social commentary on that front.
In a landscape where we watch lives fall apart for engagement, the fundamentals of shock don’t feel like a transgression anymore. They just feel like Tuesday.
Faces Of Death opens nationwide on April 1oth
Related
Faces Of Death | Meta-Horror Recontextualized
As with many people who grew up in the ’90s, horror movies were a massive part of my upbringing. If it wasn’t getting scared to death by the Tales From The Darkside intro, it was Jason Voorhees being my horror hero. There was just something about the golden age of video stores and cable TV. Anyone born in the ’80s seemed automatically drawn to the Hollywood macabre.
But despite consuming so much horror-adjacent content at such an early age, something much more sinister sat on those dusty shelves just beyond my reach. It was a 1978 shockumentary that took things a step further. The legendary whispers of Faces Of Death felt like a completely different ball game.
The lore (or marketing gimmick) of that movie and its subsequent sequels was that they were “real.”
While such claims should have been horrifying in and of themselves, they surprisingly didn’t pique my curiosity. I liked my horror to be fake and, by extension, safe. The idea of real people getting severely injured or killed was more gross than scary. Thus, I was truly terrified by the people who preferred these supposedly real-life depictions of death instead of horror movies. What kind of person could find such behavior entertaining? That is the inquiry driving Daniel Goldhaber’s recontextualized, quasi-remake of Faces Of Death.
First and foremost, Faces Of Death 2026 is not in documentary form.
Which thankfully meant no real footage of violence or death. In this reimagining, Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a content moderation firm where she and a team of technicians anonymously review videos uploaded across the internet. It’s a grueling, soul-sucking existence sifting through the digital dregs so the rest of the world doesn’t have to.
The horror shifts from psychological to visceral when a series of hyper-realistic videos pop up across various platforms. The more videos Margot analyzes, the more real the footage seems. As the videos pour in, she’s convinced she is no longer watching rage bait but a serial killer in real time. Suddenly, the line between content creation and murder blurs, and it becomes a race against time to stop a grizzly serial killer. If not, she will become the star of his nightmareish remake of the VHS cult classic, Faces Of Death.
By ditching the documentary format of the original, Faces Of Death uses the meta approach as a springboard to go all-in on its motif. Despite being a slasher film at its core, this iteration presents itself as a psychological thriller more than anything else. There is no mystery and absolutely no twist in its plot. In fact, the viewer already knows who the killer is before we see a single person killed. Even though that takes some of the wind out of its sails, the film does a good enough job setting its small yet unsettling plot in motion without haste. It’s not so much a body-count movie with rules and tropes, but a tech noir. Think of it as Se7en for the influencer generation.
With its brisk runtime and the mystery pre-trimmed, the film misses some opportunities.
By already knowing who the killer is, we get more time seeing Arthur Spevak (played wonderfully by Dacre Montgomery) being a depraved ghoul. Somewhere between Saw’s Jigsaw and American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, Arthur is a cool, calculated killer, always 2 steps ahead. Meanwhile, Margot isn’t a traditional final girl. She’s a human being who underthinks action while overthinking hypothetical scenarios. Fortunately, she has just enough backstory to keep her do-gooder-ness from being obnoxious. Is she an interesting protagonist? Not really, but anyone sharing the screen with Montgomery in this role would have their work cut out for them.
Unfortunately, the more time the film spends building toward a confrontation between these two characters, the less the audience cares. Margot’s story is fine and all, but to be honest, Faces Of Death would’ve worked much better (and been scarier) if the entire film had followed Arthur’s journey of recreating scenes from the original film. The social commentary is there, but it’s cut short in order to have more action on screen. This approach devalues the action because the meta-commentary is often so on-the-nose that the payoffs feel rushed and underwhelming.
Oddly enough, the biggest villain in Faces Of Death is every plot point working against each other.
Montgomery devours the screen, and the commentary is timely, but what’s the point if each element contradicts everything? In fact, the gore of Faces Of Death is surprisingly tame. Outside of a few flashes of visceral horror on computer screens early in the film, the rest of the violence is mostly implied. That’s not to say it’s a walk in the park, but most of the scares come in the form of Hitchcockian build-up. That would be okay with any other film, but why dilute things here, of all places? There’s a specific expectation tied to the legacy of Faces Of Death, but sadly, they’re not met.
Despite the film’s internal narrative conflicts, the haunting, almost dream-like quality of Isaac Bauman’s cinematography elevates it above your standard slasher fare. The Stranger Things-esque soundtrack from Gavin Brivik also adds to the ominous vibe, but never really commits to its own promises. Charli XCX’s brief role is fun, and there are even bits of dark humor for levity. At its best, it captures the cold, sterile meta-commentary that Scream 5, 6, and 7 desperately wanted to achieve but ultimately failed to grasp. But at its worst, I was left waiting for something to happen; more of Arthur on the screen would’ve helped tremendously.
To be clear, Faces of Death isn’t a terrible film.
It’s just a deeply confused one where neither commentary nor visceral scares reign supreme. On paper, a modern remake of this particular franchise doesn’t make much sense anyway. The original film was later revealed to be staged, as its guerrilla marketing was a cash-grabbing tool. And yet, there’s plenty to say about society’s fixation with death and reality. This movie should have been an opportunity to have an uncomfortable conversation about both by pointing the finger at ourselves. Of course, it’s 2026, and we’re well beyond the novelty of the internet. Not only is depravity all but common, but we’re all just a little desensitized if not completely.
Society is so far removed from morbid curiosity that exploring the franchise’s brand of taboo feels almost generic and outdated. Think about it: Most aspects of contemporary entertainment and communication are based around the consumption of reality through social media. Fast-paced video outlets like TikTok are rotting everyone’s brains faster than you can rewind a videotape. We really don’t need any social commentary on that front.
In a landscape where we watch lives fall apart for engagement, the fundamentals of shock don’t feel like a transgression anymore. They just feel like Tuesday.
Faces Of Death opens nationwide on April 1oth
Related